why the lucky stiff wrote: > Like Robert said, ARGF isn't an IO object. If you run ARGF.to_io, > you'll only get the first stream. ARGF is a set of streams. The > question is: does each supplied stream separately contain a YAML > document? Or do the streams represent chunks of a partitioned YAML > document? Your example seems to indicate the second. But I would have > found the first more natural. > > #1. YAML::load( ARGF.read ) > #2. ARGF.collect { |doc| YAML::load( doc ) } In my case, #1, or perhaps YAML::load(ARGF.file) - I haven't decided yet. This satisfies my curiosity, thank you very much!