URI("http://jp.rubyist.net/") returns a URI::HTTP, whereas open("http://jp.rubyist.net/") returns a StringIO.

URI::HTTP#read opens and closes a stream internally, whereas StringIO#read only performs a read on the existing stream and leaves the stream open (until it is reaped by the GC).

However, I’m not sure what additional resources (if any) could be freed by closing a StringIO, so it may not matter much either way.

I’m a big akr fan and his picture is now my desktop wallpaper.

“He told an idea to introduce a literal for pathname rather than Pathname.new. pathname should be handled as an object as easily as possible. I will vote yes.”

I will vote no.

I will abstain.

Then I will spell my own name correctly.

Hmm, I’ve got mixed feelings about pathname literals. I guess I’ll vote no. I don’t think it needs to be.

But it would be nice if it were even more visible in the standard library and so forth somehow…

Literals make better sense with multi-line strings, but I guess you can still just pass them in as a braced string to a method:

 yaml %{
   monkey: blue
   tiger: red
   cheetah: gray
 }

I despise quotes around multi-line strings—that dangling quote. So literals are nice cause they mark open and close. But I also think it’s handy because (visually) you’re reserving a string type. The possibility for providing other data-describing annotations in Ruby increases by giving it its own syntax hook.

 zoo = %y{
   monkey: blue
   tiger: red
   cheetah: gray
 }

 jsobj = %json{
   'monkey' => 'blue',
   'tiger' => 'red',
   'cheetah' => 'gray'
 }

In fact, it would be really cool if we could capture the symbol used to surround the literal. So to build a JSON array:

 zoo = %json[
   'monkey',
   'rabbit',
   'elephant'
 ]

Maybe I’ll join the quotes side if we can get some Unicode curly quotes around our strings.

“Literals make better sense with multi-line strings”.

No, they don’t. Quotes and HERE documents are quite sufficient, and they make sense. I’m not sure why having strings wrapped with “{}” or “[]” versus quotation marks gives you the warm fuzzies, but we don’t need it, and it doesn’t make it any more readable.

Stop trying to program in YAML .

What about when you have a string full of quotes?

"\"This\" is a \"huge\" (#{2**250}) pain \"in the butt\"" 
%Q["Whereas" this is "much" (#{2**100}) easier, "indeed!"]

Maybe it doesn’t happen that often, but I’d rather have the choice than not.

Just thought I’d mention there’s already an RCR for this (#279) if folks here wish to vote for or against.