questions.txt

Please Read:
Chapter 10 Basic Input and Output
The Rake Gem: http://rake.rubyforge.org/

1. How does Ruby read files?

There are two ways for Ruby to do I/O with files:

a. built in methods in the Kernel module (e.g., gets,puts,open,readline, etc.)
   which typically read/write from/to standard input/output, or

b. IO::File (File is a subclass of the base class IO)


Using the base IO class gives you more control of your I/O tasks (e.g.,
opening a file and processing it byte by byte)

2. How would you output "Hello World!" to a file called my_output.txt?

File.open("./my_output.txt", "w") do |file|
  file.puts "Hello World!"
end

# now verify by reading in the file and echoing to terminal
puts File.read("./my_output.txt")

3. What is the Directory class and what is it used for?

The Directory class in Ruby creates objects that are streams representing
directories in the underlying filesystem. They are used to list directories
and their contents. 
 
4. What is an IO object?

IO objects are bidirectional channels between Ruby and some external resource, 
typically either files or sockets.

5. What is rake and what is it used for? What is a rake task?

rake is used to manage Ruby software build tasks, much like make is used to
do the same in C programming. The default target for rake is a file named
Rakefile (vs. Makefile in C programming). However, rake can also be used
as a general automation tool for a variety of tasks and operations.

"Rake is a software task management tool. It allows you to specify tasks and 
describe dependencies as well as to group tasks in a namespace."
   -- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(software)

For example, given this Rakefile:

desc "Remove backup files"
task :remove_backups do
  files = Dir['*.bak']
  rm(files, verbose: true) unless files.empty?
end

when rake is invoked with

   rake remove_backups

it will remove any and all files in the current directory with a .bak extension.


A rake task is a method that defines a Rake task that can be executed from
the command line (as in the above example). Note: a task name is a symbol.