Ruby Pocket Reference

Object Class

These public methods are in the Object class, the base class for Ruby. This documentation is adapted and abbreviated from http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.html, where you can find code examples and longer explanations. Object includes the Kernel module, whose methods are listed in the next section.

Object Instance Methods

obj == other [or] obj.equal?(other) [or] obj.eql?(other)

At the Object level, == returns true only if obj and other are the same object. Typically, this method is overridden in descendant classes to provide class-specific meaning. Unlike ==, the equal? method should never be overridden by subclasses: it is used to determine object identity (that is, a.equal?(b) if and only if a is the same object as b). The eql? method returns true if obj and other have the same value.

obj === other

For class Object, effectively the same as calling ==, but typically overridden by descendants to provide meaningful semantics in case statements.

obj =˜ other

Overridden by descendants (notably Regexp and String) to provide meaningful pattern-match semantics.

obj._ _id_ _ [or] obj.object_id

Returns an integer identifier for obj. The same number will be returned on all calls to id for a given object, and no two active objects will share an id. Object#object_id is a different concept from the :name notation, which returns the symbol id of name. Replaces the deprecated Object#id.

obj.class

Returns the class of obj, now preferred over Object#type, because an object’s type in ...