Method: Object#inspect

Defined in:

object.c

#inspect ⇒ String

Returns a string containing a human-readable representation of obj. The default #inspect shows the object’s class name, an encoding of its memory address, and a list of the instance variables and their values (by calling #inspect on each of them). User defined classes should override this method to provide a better representation of obj. When overriding this method, it should return a string whose encoding is compatible with the default external encoding.

[ 1, 2, 3..4, 'five' ].inspect   #=> "[1, 2, 3..4, \"five\"]"
Time.new.inspect                 #=> "2008-03-08 19:43:39 +0900"

class Foo
end
Foo.new.inspect                  #=> "#<Foo:0x0300c868>"

class Bar
  def initialize
    @bar = 1
  end
end
Bar.new.inspect                  #=> "#<Bar:0x0300c868 @bar=1>"

Returns:

• (String)

# File 'object.c', line 818

static VALUE
rb_obj_inspect(VALUE obj)
{
    if (rb_ivar_count(obj) > 0) {
        VALUE str;
        VALUE c = rb_class_name(CLASS_OF(obj));

        str = rb_sprintf("-<%"PRIsVALUE":%p", c, (void*)obj);
        return rb_exec_recursive(inspect_obj, obj, str);
    }
    else {
        return rb_any_to_s(obj);
    }
}