Looksee

A tool for illustrating the ancestry and method lookup path of objects. Handy for exploring unfamiliar codebases.

How

Install me:

gem install looksee

Pop this in your .irbrc:

require 'looksee'

Now each object has a method ls, which shows you all its methods.

irb> [].ls
=> BasicObject
  !   __id__    initialize     method_missing            singleton_method_undefined
  !=  __send__  instance_eval  singleton_method_added
  ==  equal?    instance_exec  singleton_method_removed
Kernel
  !~                       enum_for                    kind_of?                  respond_to_missing?
  <=>                      eql?                        lambda                    select
  ===                      eval                        load                      send
  =~                       exec                        local_variables           set_trace_func
  Array                    exit                        loop                      singleton_class
  Complex                  exit!                       method                    singleton_method
  Float                    extend                      methods                   singleton_methods
  Hash                     fail                        nil?                      sleep
  Integer                  fork                        object_id                 spawn
  Rational                 format                      open                      sprintf
  String                   freeze                      p                         srand
  __callee__               frozen?                     print                     syscall
  __dir__                  gem                         printf                    system
  __method__               gem_original_require        private_methods           taint
  `                        gets                        proc                      tainted?
  abort                    global_variables            protected_methods         tap
  at_exit                  hash                        public_method             test
  autoload                 initialize_clone            public_methods            throw
  autoload?                initialize_copy             public_send               to_enum
  binding                  initialize_dup              putc                      to_s
  block_given?             inspect                     puts                      trace_var
  caller                   instance_of?                raise                     trap
  caller_locations         instance_variable_defined?  rand                      trust
  catch                    instance_variable_get       readline                  untaint
  class                    instance_variable_set       readlines                 untrace_var
  clone                    instance_variables          remove_instance_variable  untrust
  define_singleton_method  is_a?                       require                   untrusted?
  display                  iterator?                   require_relative          warn
  dup                      itself                      respond_to?
Looksee::ObjectMixin
  ls
Object
  DelegateClass  default_src_encoding  irb_binding
Enumerable
  all?            detect            entries     group_by  min        reject        take
  any?            drop              find        include?  min_by     reverse_each  take_while
  chunk           drop_while        find_all    inject    minmax     select        to_a
  chunk_while     each_cons         find_index  lazy      minmax_by  slice_after   to_h
  collect         each_entry        first       map       none?      slice_before  to_set
  collect_concat  each_slice        flat_map    max       one?       slice_when    zip
  count           each_with_index   grep        max_by    partition  sort
  cycle           each_with_object  grep_v      member?   reduce     sort_by
Array
  &              collect!     eql?             keep_if               reverse       sort!
  *              combination  fetch            last                  reverse!      sort_by!
  +              compact      fill             length                reverse_each  take
  -              compact!     find_index       map                   rindex        take_while
  <<             concat       first            map!                  rotate        to_a
  <=>            count        flatten          pack                  rotate!       to_ary
  ==             cycle        flatten!         permutation           sample        to_h
  []             delete       frozen?          pop                   select        to_s
  []=            delete_at    hash             product               select!       transpose
  any?           delete_if    include?         push                  shift         uniq
  assoc          dig          index            rassoc                shuffle       uniq!
  at             drop         initialize       reject                shuffle!      unshift
  bsearch        drop_while   initialize_copy  reject!               size          values_at
  bsearch_index  each         insert           repeated_combination  slice         zip
  clear          each_index   inspect          repeated_permutation  slice!        |
  collect        empty?       join             replace               sort

Methods are colored according to whether they're public, protected, private, undefined (using Module#undef_method), or overridden.

(Undefined methods are not shown on MRI 2.3 due to interpreter limitations.)

You can hide, say, private methods like this:

irb> [].ls :noprivate

Or filter the list by Regexp:

irb> [].ls /^to_/
 => BasicObject
Kernel
  to_enum  to_s
Looksee::ObjectMixin
Object
  to_yaml  to_yaml_properties  to_yaml_style
Enumerable
  to_a  to_set
Array
  to_a  to_ary  to_s  to_yaml

Proxy objects

Objects that delegate everything via method_missing to some other object can be tricky, because they will delegate ls itself. To view such objects, you can always do:

Looksee[object]

This will also work for BasicObject instances that don't have an ls method. Object#ls is simply a wrapper around Looksee.[].

To the source!

If you want to know more about any of those methods, Looksee can take you straight to the source in your editor:

[].ls.edit :to_set

By default, this uses vi; customize it like this:

# %f = file, %l = line number
Looksee.editor = "mate -l%l %f"

ls in your way?

If you have a library that for some reason can't handle an ls method existing on Object, you may rename it like this:

Looksee.rename :_ls

Quick Reference

We've got one:

Looksee.help

Enjoy!

Troubleshooting

ANSI Escapes

If your pager is not configured, you may see ugly output like this:

ESC[1;37mArrayESC[0m
ESC[1;32m&ESC[0m ESC[1;32mcompact!ESC[0m ESC[1;32minclude?ESC[0m
ESC[1;32mrassocESC[0m ESC[1;32mto_aESC[0m

The most common pager is less, which you can configure by setting an environment variable like this in your shell configuration (usually ~/.bashrc):

export LESS=-R

Contributing

• Bug reports
• Source
• Patches: Fork on Github, send pull request.
  • Include tests where practical.
  • Leave the version alone, or bump it in a separate commit.

Copyright

Copyright (c) George Ogata. See LICENSE for details.