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Finder is a straight-forward file finder for searching Ruby library paths. It can handle RubyGems, Rolls and Ruby's standard site locals. It is both more flexible and more robust the using Gem.find_files or searching the $LOAD_PATH manually.

To find paths, simply provide a glob to the appropriate Finder function, and it will return all matches found within current or most recent versions of a library.

For example, a common use case for plug-in enabled application is to require all the files found in library load paths:

require 'finder'

Find.feature('myapp/*').each do |file|
  require(file)
end

This is basically equivalent to:

Find.load_path('myapp/*.rb', :relative=>true).each do |file|
  require(file)
end

Alternately you might load files only as needed. For instance, if a command-line option calls for it.

In addition Finder has two optional Kernel extensions: #import and #import_relative. These methods can be used like #require and #require_relative, but load code directory into the current scope instead of the toplevel.

require 'finder/import'

module My
  import('abbrev.rb')
emd

My::Abbrev::abbrev(['ruby'])
=> {"rub"=>"ruby", "ru"=>"ruby", "r"=>"ruby", "ruby"=>"ruby"}

It is important to be careful when using #import to make sure loaded scripts behave as intended. For example, if abbrev.rb were to define itself using :: toplevel namespace indicators, i.e. ::Abbrev, then the above import would not work as demonstrated.

Finder is copyrighted opensource software.

Copyright (c) 2009 Rubyworks

It can be modified and redistributed in accordance with the terms of the BSD-2-Clause license.

See LICENSE.txt file for details.