From: "Marvin Gülker" <sutniuq@...>
Date: 2010-02-18T02:12:59+09:00
Subject: Re: lookup up documentation for inherited methods

Nick Brown wrote:
> I find it frustrating when using "ri" to look up documentation on a
> class, only to find the method I'm curious about is not listed.
> 
> As an example: String objects have many more methods than are explained
> in the documentation for String (example: String.grep). When you run
> "ri" on String.grep, you get "Nothing known about String.grep". This is
> apparently because the grep method was inherited from another class.
> 
> Is there any way to have ri automatically check the documentation of
> parent classes if no documentation is found for a method of a particular
> object? Or is there a better way to access Ruby's documentation than "ri
> Class.method"? I don't want to have to do detective work to look up a
> simple method...

Maybe you can't find the grep method in String, because it hasn't such a 
method?
---------------------------------------
ruby -v: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [x86_64-linux]
irb(main):001:0> "ABC".grep
NoMethodError: undefined method `grep' for "ABC":String
  from (irb):1
  from 
/home/marvin/Programmieren/Programme/ruby_shell/ruby_shell.rb:52:in 
`<main>'
irb(main):002:0>
---------------------------------------

And no, I don't know of a way to check inherited methods. But you could 
do
---------------------------------------
ri grep
     More than one method matched your request.  You can refine your
     search by asking for information on one of:

Enumerable#grep [Ruby 1.9.1]
Rake::FileList#egrep [gem rake-0.8.7]
---------------------------------------
So, #grep is defined in Enumerable. Then you can look for 
Enumerable#grep.

Marvin
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