From: Mark Hubbart <discord@...>
Date: 2004-04-26T03:58:30+09:00
Subject: Re: rexml: how to get element type?


On Apr 24, 2004, at 11:29 AM, Sean Russell wrote:

>> Btw could it be somehow possible to have a smaller string
>> repretsentation for rexml objects ? they screw up IRB work ;)
>
> Can you give me an example of what you'd like to see?

If I can jump in here... That last time I tried working with rexml, I 
opened a medium sized xml file in irb. I created a new REXML::Document 
IIRC, and it automatically inspected it, since it was the return value. 
I literally took about five minutes for the text to scroll past on my 
screen; When I called .inspect.size on the result, it was somewhere 
around 1.5 megs. I kept working with it for a bit, adding a ";0" at the 
end of each line so it wouldn't inspect the return value.

for example, a stored settings file I wanted to work with:

 >> (plist = open("com.apple.internetconfig.plist"){|f|f.read}).size
=> 228291
 >> doc = Document.new(plist); 0
=> 0
 >> doc.inspect.size
=> 1424751

something useful would be a small list of attributes, the number of 
children, etc...  just as long as it's no more than several lines of 
text. :) I credit my irb experience with rexml as the reason I still 
don't know how to use it.

> By the way, I find the following to be useful when looking for
> methods; it is almost always more readable that #inspect :-)
>
> 	obj.methods.sort

I agree :) Also, this can be useful if that shows way to much still:

     (obj.methods - Object.new.methods).sort

I added that to my .irbrc file  defined as Object#less_methods.

cheers,
--Mark