misleading variable value

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm going to invoke action view base from console, passing a string object:

1.9.3p0 :016 > ActionView::Base.new('app/views')

=> #<ActionView::Base:0x007fd95c5e8f48 @_config={}, @view_renderer=#<ActionView::Renderer:0x007fd95c5e8c50 @lookup_context=#<ActionView::LookupContext:0x007fd95c5e8ed0 @details_key=nil, @details={:handlers=>[:erb, :builder, :coffee], :formats=>[:html, :text, :js, :css, :ics, :csv, :xml, :rss, :atom, :yaml, :multipart_form, :url_encoded_form, :json], :locale=>[:en, :en]}, @skip_default_locale=false, @frozen_formats=false, @cache=true, @prefixes=, @view_paths=[/Users/johnmerlino/github/my_diet/app/ views]>>, @_assigns={}, @_controller=nil, @view_flow=#<ActionView::OutputFlow:0x007fd95c5e8c28 @content={}>, @output_buffer=nil, @virtual_path=nil>

Look at the return value assigned to @view_paths. It should not be an array. It should be a PathSet object instance, which has an instance variable called @paths, which holds an array of OptimizedFileSystemResolver object instances, which themselves hold a @path instance variable that is the very string represented in that @view_paths array above. So what's going on?

2

It is a PathSet object - the easiest way to check this is to type:   ActionView::Base.new('app/views').view_paths.class

What you see when you call "ActionView::Base.new('app/views')" is just a string representation of the object. To assume when you look at the to_s output in the console that the original object is what the to_s produced is like looking at a black and white photograph and assuming the subject of the photo was black and white.