Question

Is there a cleaner built-in way to do this?

ree> Pathname.new('/path/to').children.select{|e| e.directory?}.map{|d| d.basename.to_s}
 => ["test1", "test2"]

Ideally I would like to avoid the directory? call

Answer 1

Starting from Chandra’s answer, depending on whether you need or not the full path, you can use

Dir['app/*/']
# => ["app/controllers/", "app/helpers/", "app/metal/", "app/models/", "app/sweepers/", "app/views/"

Dir['app/*/'].map { |a| File.basename(a) }
# => ["controllers", "helpers", "metal", "models", "sweepers", "views"]

If you use Ruby >= 1.8.7, Chandra’s answer can also be rewritten as

Pathname.glob('app/*/').map(&:basename)
# you can skip .to_s unless you don't need to work with strings
# remember you can always use a pathname as string for the most part of Ruby functions
# or interpolate the value