Ruby Pathname Moved to Core, Documentation Upgraded

In release 4.0, the Ruby Powers-That-Be have brought class Pathname into the Ruby core. This is a Very Good Thing.

Through its many instance methods, a Pathname object provides a consistent and convenient interface to numerous methods in other classes and modules:

• Wraps almost all methods in class File and module FileTest.
• Wraps some methods in class Dir and module FileUtils.

Advantages of using Pathname instead of these others:

• You don’t have to know which class or module has which methods.
• You don’t have to keep typing the class name and path variable.

However, for many of the Pathname methods, the existing documentation merely links to another method in another class, with scant or no local examples. That documentation may be seen in Ruby 4.0.

I've completed a re-write of the documentation (with the usual excellent reviewing by Peter Zhu). It may be seen for now in Ruby master, and which will be release with Ruby 4.1 later this year.

The re-write gives a Pathname-local description and example for each method. (No more linking to a similar or underlying method elsewhere.)

I've also revised the documentation for the class itself, and added a "What's Here" section.

Happy Pathnames!