In release 4.0, the Ruby Powers-That-Be have brought class Pathname into the Ruby core. This is a Very Good Thing. Through its many instance methods, a Pathname object provides a consistent and convenient interface to numerous methods in other classes and modules: Wraps almost all methods in class File and module FileTest . Wraps some methods in class Dir and module FileUtils . Advantages of using Pathname instead of these others: You don’t have to know which clas...