> => 0.125
> irb(main):003:0>
>
> As you can see, IRB seems to load the docs only once, so after that
> every "help" is answered very quickly (even if you look for a
> different method than the first time). BTW: I myself learned about the
> help method just a couple of weeks ago on one of the mailing lists,
> after using Ruby for more than eight years...

LOL cool.
I think the reason most of us miss it is that it's not very OO.
You have to go through the object system instance#methods to look for
a hopeful method to do something you want, then you don't realize you
have to go back around and through irb to access its help
documentation.

Good to know it's only slow once per run :) Maybe the dependency on
fastri won't be necessary.  I'll probably bundle irb's functionality
and the other stuffs [#source_location, 1.9.2 #parameters] into a gem
sometime--at the least useful for those who don't have a full rdoc
installed, and helpful for methods that have no rdoc.

I suppose if anyone's interested I could add that extra functionality
into irb's help, too [i.e. add an optional "source String#chars"
command--that type of thing].
Thoughts?
-=r