One of the major plus factors with Ruby and also all the extra gems is that they usually come with helpful documentation, both the RI and RDOC packages.

To access these is pretty simple, if a little daunting at first, from the Terminal.

ri Class

ri Class::method (:: for class mathods)

ri Class#method (# for instance methods)

The first line will return the RI dictionary definition and usage of the [class] you require, the second can be used to drill this down to the related [method] for the [class]

To use this, replace [class] & [method] with something like..

ri Enumerable

ri Enumerable#zip

…here the top line will return the definition & usage of the Enumerable class, the next will drill that down to a particular instance method.

You can also output this content to an HTML file via,

ri -Tf html String#gsub > gsub.html

…or to the Terminal using ANSI formatting

ri -Tf ansi String#gsub

…took this off a part of Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby, hope to embelish this a bit further later.

John.