From: tom_33 <tomjbr.56770318@...>
Date: 2008-02-20T07:45:01+09:00
Subject: Is there any object-oriented File class in ruby ?

I am very new to Ruby and my question is about trying to understand
why Ruby is often described as a "pure object-oriented language", when
the core library seems to be quite procedural.

For example, the class File seems to have a big bunch of procedural
functions (or static methods, or whatever you want to call them) that
needs the filename to be provided as a parameter.

The File class in java is a much better OO class for managing files:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/io/File.html
than the following ruby class:
http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/File.html

For example, the ruby method File.basename is documented as only
supporting forward slashes, regardless of the local file system.
File.basename("/home/gumby/work/ruby.rb")          #=> "ruby.rb"
Essentially, this seems to be not much more than a string parsing
function with no OO abstraction that represents a file object.
Compare this with doing the same thing with java:
File f = new File("/home/gumby/work/ruby.rb"); // or new File("C:\\home
\\gumby\\work\\ruby.rb");
f.getName() #=> "ruby.rb"

Now my question is what have I been missing here ?
I mean, is there any other much better File class somewhere in the
Ruby core that is more pure OO, or otherwise why is a language with a
CORE procedural "class" library described as being a pure oo
language ?

/ Tom