IO Open Mode
Ruby allows the following open modes:
"r" Read-only, starts at beginning of file (default mode).
"r+" Read-write, starts at beginning of file.
"w" Write-only, truncates existing file
to zero length or creates a new file for writing.
"w+" Read-write, truncates existing file to zero length
or creates a new file for reading and writing.
"a" Write-only, each write call appends data at end of file.
Creates a new file for writing if file does not exist.
"a+" Read-write, each write call appends data at end of file.
Creates a new file for reading and writing if file does
not exist.
The following modes must be used separately, and along with one or more of the modes seen above.
"b" Binary file mode
Suppresses EOL <-> CRLF conversion on Windows. And
sets external encoding to ASCII-8BIT unless explicitly
specified.
"t" Text file mode
When the open mode of original IO is read only, the mode cannot be changed to be writable. Similarly, the open mode cannot be changed from write only to readable.
When such a change is attempted the error is raised in different locations according to the platform.