What is the difference between ri and rdoc

thenengah picture thenengah · Sep 4, 2010 · Viewed 9.2k times · Source

Whenever I install gems I see ri and rdoc follow. I know this is documentation but what is the difference between the two and how to use them?

Answer

Esselans picture Esselans · Sep 4, 2010

RDoc [..] is the embedded documentation generator for the Ruby programming language. [..] RDoc is included as part of the Ruby core distribution.

RDoc also provides the engine for creating Ruby ri data files. ri is (more or less) Ruby's version of man pages, serving up API information from the command line.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDoc