From: Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackryan@...>
Date: 2008-03-17T01:24:09+09:00
Subject: Re: argh! more undocumented mysteries: to_yaml

Tom Cloyd wrote:

> Phillip, good research begins with careful observation - in this case, 
> of the materials at hand. In my immediately previous email I pointed out 
> that the ruby core documentation, for which I gave a reference, so you 
> could check my accuracy (basic scholarly method), tells me that 
> Object#to_yaml should be available to all object unless "explicitly 
> overridden". I then present some cases where it isn't available. That 
> contradiction is what I could not explain. I do not expect such a 
> blatant error/omission/contradiction - or whatever - in the ruby core 
> documentation. If I can't trust what it says about the root object of 
> all objects, then what can I trust? That, to me, looks like a problem - 
> and not exactly one I'd expect Google or some blog entry to solve.

You do know, however, that the state of Ruby's documentation on the web 
is rather bad. Which creates faulty assumptions, as you've noticed. ;)

And yes, something like this is something a blog entry (or, more 
generally speaking, a blog entry) can solve, since you more likely than 
not aren't the first person to have this problem.

Unfortunately, the only way to get a reasonably up-to-date documentation 
for Ruby is via Programming Ruby (and maybe The Ruby Programming 
Language), which also provides usage examples. The free edition of the 
Pickaxe is slightly out of date (as has been mentioned elsewhere).

The trick is, that you are standing on the shoulder of giants. Tapping 
into that, can make Ruby much more hassle free (and I've ran against a 
wall when using Ruby's documentation myself, hence my fondness for the 
Pickaxe).

-- Phillip Gawlowski