Question

I tried finding how File.open() was implemented but I couldn’t find it while grepping around in the code I got from https://github.com/ruby/ruby

Answer 1

There is no File::open, it is inherited from IO. So, you need to look for IO::open.

In general, I recommend using the Rubinius source code for this. It is much better organized and much better documented than YARV’s source code, and most importantly: it is mostly written in Ruby, whereas in YARV the entire language, the entire core library and significant portions of the standard library are written in C.

That being said, the implementation of IO::open is completely and utterly boring. It just does the obvious thing:

def self.open(*args)
  io = new(*args)

  return io unless block_given?

  begin
    yield io
  ensure
    begin
      io.close unless io.closed?
    rescue StandardError
      # nothing, just swallow them.
    end
  end
end