From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2008-09-17T11:55:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Q: IO.read() and IO.write()

Hi,

In message "Re: Q: IO.read() and IO.write()"
    on Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:17:56 +0900, kwatch <kwatch@gmail.com> writes:

|I have questions about IO and File class.
|
|* Why is IO.read(filename) defined?
|  IMO, File.read() is more natural than IO.read() because
|  IO class is not related to filename, I think.

No big reason.  Historically IO works on files, i.e.  IO.open(path),
so that it was natural to provide these methods in IO too.

|* Is there any reason that IO.write() (or File.write()) is not
|provided?
|  I have to define File.write() for each project...
|  It is easy to define File.write() but I hope it is provided by Ruby.

For File.read(), when you want to specify file mode, you can just say:

  File.read(path, "rb")

For File.write(), it is more likely to be:

  File.write(path, str, "wb")

which makes me feel weird.  In 1.9, we can write

  File.write(path, str, mode: "wb")

which I feel slightly better.


							matz.