Pathname

Pathname represents the name of a file or directory on the filesystem, but not the file itself.

The pathname depends on the Operating System: Unix, Windows, etc. This library works with pathnames of local OS, however non-Unix pathnames are supported experimentally.

A Pathname can be relative or absolute. It's not until you try to reference the file that it even matters whether the file exists or not.

Pathname is immutable. It has no method for destructive update.

The goal of this class is to manipulate file path information in a neater way than standard Ruby provides. The examples below demonstrate the difference.

All functionality from File, FileTest, and some from Dir and FileUtils is included, in an unsurprising way. It is essentially a facade for all of these, and more.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'pathname'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install pathname

require 'pathname'
pn = Pathname.new("/usr/bin/ruby")
size = pn.size              # 27662
isdir = pn.directory?       # false
dir  = pn.dirname           # Pathname:/usr/bin
base = pn.basename          # Pathname:ruby
dir, base = pn.split        # [Pathname:/usr/bin, Pathname:ruby]
data = pn.read
pn.open { |f| _ }
pn.each_line { |line| _ }

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake to compile this and run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ruby/pathname.