From: MonkeeSage <MonkeeSage@...>
Date: 2007-12-28T02:14:58+09:00
Subject: Re: about method docs

On Dec 27, 10:23 am, Santanu <thisissant...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 27, 8:05 pm, MonkeeSage <MonkeeS...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Dec 27, 8:22 am, Santanu <thisissant...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Dec 27, 6:56 pm, Jeremy McAnally <jeremymcana...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I believe you can use `help`.  For example:  help puts
> > > Yes, I did try things like 'help puts', but all I get are these error
> > > messages:
> > > -------------------------------------------
> > > irb(main):032:0> help puts
>
> > > No ri documentation found in:
>
> > > Was rdoc run to create documentation?
> > > .........
> > > -------------------------------------
>
> > > I use Ubuntu 7.10, and I have already installed rdoc. I don't
> > > understand
> > > the error message much but it seems I have to do something else to
> > > make the help command work. Do I have to install ruby source and run
> > > rdoc through them?
> > Maybe there are ri / ruby-doc / ruby-dev packages that provide the
> > docs? You shouldn't have to build from source...I can't imagine the
> > maintainers of Ubuntu would leave it out altogether. But I could be
> > wrong...in which case here is a guide for building ruby from source on
> > ubuntu (it's easy :)http://www.rubywizards.com/viewtopic.php?pid=19
>
> Thanks. Just now I compiled ruby-1.9 and installed it with docs. Now,
> at least
> help command at the irb prompt provides some help. 'help puts' is
> still
> problematic though, but things like 'help Array' does give some
> understandable
> result.
>
> However, I am still searching for the exact syntax for asking for help
> on say, Array.collect, etc. at the irb prompt. Any pointers?
>
> Regards,
> Santanu

Sure, be glad to. :)


# help about the instance method "reverse_each"
# (found in class Array).
help "send"


# if multiple methods match, it will give a list with
# the qualifying namespaces. note that symbols can be
# used rather than strings as the argument to #help
help :index


# instance method "each_slice" of Enumerable module.
# note the string use, so that ruby doesn't try to
# call each_slice on a Symbol object (:Enumerable)
# note also that the "#" could be spelled as "."
# and ri doesn't care; but "#" is the usual spelling
# you'll see round here when speaking about methods
help "Enumerable#each_slice"


# help about an instance method of a module nested
# in a class. note the string again. like in ruby
# itself, access to a class/module-level constant
# (in this case a module) is done with "::". but
# for instance-level, we use "#" / "." (only the
"." is valid in actual ruby code)
help "OptionParser::Completion#complete"


# help about a class method of a class nested
# in a class. note again the syntax difference,
# "#" / "." vs. "::".
help "OptionParser::Switch::guess"

Ps. The examples I used aren't the most enlightening, I just opened a
random stdlib file and looked at the first instances of what I was
trying to exemplify; so don't think that all (or even most) of the
ruby documentation is as cryptic or unhelpful as, for example, the
output from ` help "OptionParser::Switch::guess"` heh! ;)

Regards,
Jordan