is there a way to get or list all available classes?

[Daniel Schüle]

Hello,

topic says it all
for example irb knows many classes like Dir, File, Process, Thread ..
can I somehow list them, maybe the are kept in some array ..
if it's possible, can additional classes provided through
require "foo"
be listet too?

I hope my question is clear
thanks in advance

Regards, Daniel

[Wayne Vucenic]

Hi Daniel,

Try this:

C:\>irb
irb(main):001:0> ObjectSpace.each_object(Class) {|c| p c}
Gem::SourceIndex
OpenSSL::Digest::SHA1
OpenSSL::Digest::SHA
Gem::ConsoleUI
OpenSSL::Digest::RIPEMD160
Gem::StreamUI
..etc...etc...etc

Wayne Vucenic
No Bugs Software
Ruby and C++ Agile Contract Programming in Silicon Valley

[Timothy Hunter]

classes = []
ObjectSpace.each_object {|obj| classes << obj if obj.class == Class}
classes = classes.sort_by {|cls| cls.inspect}
puts classes

[Robert Klemme]

Wayne Vucenic wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Try this:
>
> C:\>irb
> irb(main):001:0> ObjectSpace.each_object(Class) {|c| p c}
> Gem::SourceIndex
> OpenSSL::Digest::SHA1
> OpenSSL::Digest::SHA
> Gem::ConsoleUI
> OpenSSL::Digest::RIPEMD160
> Gem::StreamUI
> ..etc...etc...etc

Note, that all approaches using ObjectSpace list only classes known to the
interpreter at this moment. There might be more classes whose files
haven't been required / loaded yet. You won't see them. Also, additional
classes may be generated dynamically.

Kind regards

robert

[David Vallner]

A slightly more hackish solution I think that might also work with
autoloads (way too early in the morning to go and code it), is to use
#constants, eval those, select the ones that are classes, recurse,
rinse, repeat. Mind you, this is potentially a much worse resource hog
than the ObjectSpace approach.

David Vallner

[Robert Evans]

Hi,

Not sure exactly which list of "classes available" you want, but if
you wanted to know all the classes available to the interpreter to
load, then you could conceivably iterate the directories in $:, the
load path, and look at all .rb files in them and their subdirectories
and parse them for the classes that they define.

Bob

[Gene Tani]

right, and immediate values are kind of important:Fixnum, Symbol,
TrueClass, FalseClass, NilClass ;-p}