Question

like the following line of code

sites = YAML::load(File.open(SITESPATH))

is it necessary to change to

File.open(SITESPATH) do |file|
  sites = YAML::load(file)
end

just in order to make it sure that file got closed?

Answer 1

Yes, you should close the file, so your second example is the correct one.

Just as a side-note, remember that the sites variable will not be visible outside the block, unless you already created it before the block.

Because IO.open, when called with block, returns the value of the block, you may use:

sites = File.open(SITESPATH) {|file| YAML::load(file) }