Question

When trying to delete a directory (+ contents) and after reading the files inside, FileUtils.rm_rf(path) will not delete all the folders, although it does delete all the files and some of the folders.

After some experimentation it seems to be related to a File.open block. (I actually do a regex match inside the block, but I’m just using a puts here to keep things clear)

File.open(file).each do |line|
  puts line
end

From what I’ve read, the above should automatically close the file but when using this, FileUtils fails to complete its task.

However, if I use the following code, FileUtils works as desired.

open_file = File.open(file)
open_file.each do |line|
  puts line
end
open_file.close

It’s no big deal to use the code in the second example, but I do prefer the cleanliness of the first.

Is there any reason why that first example breaks FileUtils?

P.S. I’m new to both Ruby and Stack Overflow….Hi. My system is Ubuntu 11.04 (64bit), running RVM with Ruby 1.9.2-p180

Answer 1

You should use something like this:

File.open(file) do |f|
  f.each{|line| puts line}
end

In your example the block is supplied to the each method and the version of open without a block is executed returning an IO object on which the each method is called.