RI(1)

🎀 RI(1): Ruby Programmer's Reference Guide 🎀

okay so this is the manual page for RI(1), and it's the Ruby Programmer's Reference Guide 💖 bestie this tool is literally your API reference buddy ✨

✨ NAME ✨

ri, the Ruby API reference front end 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ri [-ahilTv] [-d DIRNAME] [-f FORMAT] [-w WIDTH] [--[no-]pager]
   [--server[=PORT]] [--[no-]list-doc-dirs] [--no-standard-docs]
   [--[no-]{system|site|gems|home}] [--[no-]profile] [--dump=CACHE]
   [name ...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so ri is a command-line front end for the Ruby API reference 💅 you can search and read the API reference for classes and methods with it, no cap.

ri is a part of Ruby 🌸

You can pass in a name that looks like any of these:

Class | Module | Module::Class

Class::method | Class#method | Class.method | method

gem_name: | gem_name:README | gem_name:History

All class names can be abbreviated to their minimum unambiguous form ✨ if a name is ambiguous, all valid options get listed, so you won't miss anything 👀

A . matches either class or instance methods, while #method matches only instance methods and ::method matches only class methods. main character energy for sure 👑

README and other files can be displayed by putting the gem name they live in in front of them. If the gem name is followed by a :, all files in the gem get shown 🧚 The file name extension can be left off wherever it's unambiguous.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

ri Fil
ri File
ri File.new
ri zip
ri rdoc:README

⚠️ heads up: shell quoting or escaping may be required for method names that contain punctuation, so don't get tripped up by this one 🙈

ri 'Array.[]'
ri compact\!

To see the default directories ri will search, run:

ri --list-doc-dirs

Specifying the --system, --site, --home, --gems, or --doc-dir options will limit ri to searching only the specified directories 🎀

ri options can also be set in the RI environment variable 🫶

The ri pager can be set with the RI_PAGER environment variable or the PAGER environment variable 💜

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -i, --[no-]interactive — interactive mode lets you look up methods over and over with autocomplete 🔥
• -a, --[no-]all — show all the documentation for a class or module 💖
• -l, --[no-]list — list the classes ri knows about 📚
• --[no-]pager — send the output to a pager instead of dumping it straight to stdout 🌈
• -T — synonym for --no-pager 🍓
• -w WIDTH, --width=WIDTH — set the width of the output ✨
• --server[=PORT] — run the RDoc server on the given port. The default port is 8214 🦋
• -f FORMAT, --format=FORMAT — use the selected formatter. The default formatter is bs for paged output and ansi otherwise. Valid formatters are: ansi, bs, markdown, rdoc 💅
• -h, --help — show help and exit 🙈
• -v, --version — output version information and exit 🌸

Data source options:

• --[no-]list-doc-dirs — list the directories ri will source documentation from, printed on stdout, and then exit 🧚
• -d DIRNAME, --doc-dir=DIRNAME — a list of directories to source documentation from, on top of the standard ones. This can be repeated 🎀
• --no-standard-docs — don't include documentation from the Ruby standard library, site_lib, installed gems, or ~/.rdoc. Use this with --doc-dir 🔥
• --[no-]system — include documentation from Ruby's standard library. Defaults to true 💜
• --[no-]site — include documentation from libraries installed in site_lib. Defaults to true 🌈
• --[no-]gems — include documentation from RubyGems. Defaults to true ✨
• --[no-]home — include documentation stored in ~/.rdoc. Defaults to true 🦋

Debug options:

• --[no-]profile — run with the Ruby profiler 🙈
• --dump=CACHE — dump data from an ri cache or data file 💀

✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

• RI — options to prepend to the ones you type on the command line 🫶
• RI_PAGER, PAGER — the pager program used for displaying output 📖
• HOME, USERPROFILE, HOMEPATH — the path to the user's home directory 🏡

✨ FILES ✨

• ~/.rdoc — where ri keeps its data in the user's home directory 📂

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

ruby(1), rdoc(1), gem(1) 👑

✨ REPORTING BUGS ✨

• Security vulnerabilities should be reported by email to security@ruby-lang.org. Reported problems will be published after they've been fixed 🔒
• Other bugs and feature requests can be reported through the Ruby Issue Tracking System at https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/. Do not report security vulnerabilities through this system, because it publishes them immediately 🚨

✨ AUTHORS ✨

Written by Dave Thomas <dave@pragmaticprogrammer.com> 🫶

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okay that's the whole thing, bestie 💖 signing off from UNIX, April 20, 2017, RI(1) 💅✨