Retrieve a file in Ruby - ruby

Question

So what I am trying to do is pass a file name into a method and and check if the file is closed. What I am struggling to do is getting a file object from the file name without actually opening the file.
def file_is_closed(file_name)
file = # The method I am looking for
file.closed?
end
I have to fill in the commented part. I tried using the load_file method from the YAML module but I think that gives the content of the file instead of the actual file.
I couldn't find a method in the File module to call. Is there a method maybe that I don't know?

Answer 1

File#closed? returns whether that particular File object is closed, so there is no method that is going to make your current attempted solution work:
f1 = File.new("test.file")
f2 = File.new("test.file")
f1.close
f1.closed? # => true # Even though f2 still has the same file open
It would be best to retain the File object that you're using in order to ask it if it is closed, if possible.
If you really want to know if your current Ruby process has any File objects open for a particular path, something like this feels hack-ish but should mostly work:
def file_is_closed?(file_name)
ObjectSpace.each_object(File) do |f|
if File.absolute_path(f) == File.absolute_path(file_name) && !f.closed?
return false
end
end
true
end
I don't stand by that handling corner cases well, but it seems to work for me in general:
f1 = File.new("test.file")
f2 = File.new("test.file")
file_is_closed?("test.file") # => false
f1.close
file_is_closed?("test.file") # => false
f2.close
file_is_closed?("test.file") # => true
If you want to know if any process has the file open, I think you'll need to resort to something external like lsof.

Answer 2

For those cases where you no longer have access to the original file objects in Ruby (after fork + exec, for instance), a list of open file descriptors is available in /proc/pid/fd. Each file there is named for the file descriptor number, and is a symlink to the opened file, pipe, or socket:
# Returns hash in form fd => filename
def open_file_descriptors
Hash[
Dir.glob( File.join( '/proc', Process.pid.to_s, 'fd', '*' ) ).
map { |fn| [File.basename(fn).to_i, File.readlink(fn)] rescue [nil, nil] }.
delete_if { |fd, fn| fd.nil? or fd < 3 }
]
end
# Return IO object for the named file, or nil if it's not open
def io_for_path(path)
fd, fn = open_file_descriptors.find {|k,v| path === v}
fd.nil? ? nil : IO.for_fd(fd)
end
# close an open file
file = io_for_path('/my/open/file')
file.close unless file.nil?
The open_file_descriptors method parses the fd directory and returns a hash like {3 => '/my/open/file'}. It is then a simple matter to get the file descriptor number for the desired file, and have Ruby produce an IO object for it with for_fd.
This assumes you are on Linux, of course.