What's a reasonable way to read an entire text file as a single string?

Question

I am sure this is an easy one; I just couldn't find the answer immediately from Google.

I know I could do this (right?):

text = ""
File.open(path).each_line do |line|
    text += line
end

# Do something with text

But that seems a bit excessive, doesn't it? Or is that the way one would do it in Ruby?

Solution 1

What about IO.read()?

Edit: IO.read(), as an added bonus, closes the file for you.

Solution 2

IO.read() is what you're looking for.
File is a subclass of IO, so you may as well just use:

text = File.read(path)

Can't get more intuitive than that.

Comments

[FilBot3]

Does this put the entire file into memory, or does it keep a file pointer so it doesn't use all of your RAM reading a huge file?

[FilBot3]

Like my question for s.m., does IO, or File read the whole file into memory, or does it use a file pointer with SEEK to keep track of that instead of loading a big file into memory?

[Борис Чиликин]

@Pred it loads it into a string and therefore into memory.