@sannerwind: What might not be apparent to newbies to Ruby, is that the File class is a subclass, of the IO class, and therefor inherits all the methods of it’s superclass(es.)
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/IO.html
This is why you will not see read() and write() listed under the File class methods. So you need to refer to both classes.
“Basic Input and Output”, from the ol’ “Pick Axe” Ruby book:
http://ruby-doc.com/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/tut_io.html