What is the "$ :. unshift File.dirname (__ FILE__)"?

Question

What does the following do and why is it at the top of the page?

$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__) 

https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/blob/master/lib/jekyll.rb

Answer 1

It adds the current file directory to the download path. $: represents the load path (which is an array), and unshift added to the beginning of the array.

The reason that he (and above) is that all this requires, no need to worry about the path.

Answer 2

Technically, it adds the file path as the first entry of the download path that ruby ​​uses to search for files. $: is a magic variable and is more clearly denoted by $ LOAD_PATH.

 ruby-1.9.2-p136 > $LOAD_PATH => ["/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0"] ruby-1.9.2-p136 > $: => ["/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0"] ruby-1.9.2-p136 > $:.unshift '.' => [".", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1", "/Users/wesbailey/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-darwin10.6.0"] 

Answer 3

It adds the current working directory path to all the needs used in the project. After adding this from above, we don’t need to worry about the file path that we need, but the whole required file should be in the same directory where our main program requires other files.

$: reserved keyword for loading path.