YAML in Ruby. What is the difference between load and load_file? - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I have this practice.yml file:
foo: whatever
bar:
-
fruit: apple
name: steve
sport: baseball
- more
-
python: rocks
perl: papers
ruby: scissorses
What is the difference under the hood between #load and #load_file?
#load seems to do this magic and takes a string:
pry(main)> YAML.load("'a'")
"a"
[11] pry(main)> YAML.load("a:1")
"a:1"
[12] pry(main)> YAML.load("-a")
"-a"
[13] pry(main)> YAML.load("[a]")
[
[0] "a"
]
[14] pry(main)> YAML.load("[a,bc]")
[
[0] "a",
[1] "bc"
]
Whereas load_file seems to just take a file with valid yaml inside:
irb(main):002:0> YAML.load_file("practice.yml")
=> {"foo"=>"whatever", "bar"=>[{"fruit"=>"apple", "name"=>"steve", "sport"=>"baseball"}, "more", {"python"=>"rocks", "perl"=>"papers", "ruby"=>"scissorses"}]}

Answer 1

load_file calls load, like this:
def self.load_file(filename, options={})
if SafeYAML::MULTI_ARGUMENT_YAML_LOAD
File.open(filename, 'r:bom|utf-8') { |f| self.load(f, filename, options) }
else
# Ruby pukes on 1.9.2 if we try to open an empty file w/ 'r:bom|utf-8';
# so we'll not specify those flags here. This mirrors the behavior for
# unsafe_load_file so it's probably preferable anyway.
self.load File.open(filename), nil, options
end
end
Now the prototype for load() is
def self.load(yaml, filename=nil, options={})
so basically load_file is opening up the file name and passing the resulting string to load(), after checking for some empty file case related to Ruby 1.9.2