In ruby, is there a way to know in the console what a method does?

Question

In Ruby, if i am looking for the methods of a class. ie:String.methods.sort and i have the following:

[:!, :!=, :!~, :<, :<=, :<=>, :==,         


        

Answer 1

If you use Pry, it has a handy shortcut, show-source:

[1] pry(main)> show-source String.display

From: io.c (C Method):
Owner: Kernel
Visibility: public
Number of lines: 15

static VALUE
rb_obj_display(int argc, VALUE *argv, VALUE self)
{
    VALUE out;

    if (argc == 0) {
        out = rb_stdout;
    }
    else {
        rb_scan_args(argc, argv, "01", &out);
    }
    rb_io_write(out, self);

    return Qnil;
}

Answer 2

You can use

help 'String#display'

and it'll show the rdoc for the method (the same output that would show from running ri 'String#display' outside of irb. You can also just type help into irb and it'll go into a mode where you can just keep typing method names and it'll show the rdoc (enter a blank line to exit).