method

join

v1_9_1_378 - Show latest stable - Class: File
join(*args)
public

Returns a new string formed by joining the strings using File::SEPARATOR.

File.join("usr", "mail", "gumby")   #=> "usr/mail/gumby"

2Notes

Works with URLs too!

railsmonk · Oct 9, 20086 thanks

You can use it for web urls as well:

path, file = File.split('/uploads/art/2869-speaking-of-pic.jpg')

p path # => "/uploads/art"

p file # => "2869-speaking-of-pic.jpg"

And you can also use join, to merge url back from the components:

path = File.join(["/uploads/art", "2869-speaking-of-pic.jpg"])

p path # => "/uploads/art/2869-speaking-of-pic.jpg"

Using #join and #split for operations on files and path parts of the URLs is generally better than simply joining/splitting strings by '/' symbol. Mostly because of normalization:

File.split('//tmp///someimage.jpg') # => ["/tmp", "someimage.jpg"]

'//tmp///someimage.jpg'.split('/') # => ["", "", "tmp", "", "", "someimage.jpg"]

Same thing happens with join.

Eliminates Double Slashes

iq-9 · Feb 10, 2011

Also eliminates inadvertent double slashes:

path = '/uploads/art/'
file = '/pic.jpg'
File.join(path, file) # => '/uploads/art/pic.jpg'