Rails.env vs RAILS_ENV

Question

I see both in examples when checking what env one is running in. What\'s preferred? Are they, for all intents and purposes equal?

Answer 1

According to the docs, #Rails.env wraps RAILS_ENV:

    # File vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb, line 55
     def env
       @_env ||= ActiveSupport::StringInquirer.new(RAILS_ENV)
     end

But, look at specifically how it's wrapped, using ActiveSupport::StringInquirer:

Wrapping a string in this class gives you a prettier way to test for equality. The value returned by Rails.env is wrapped in a StringInquirer object so instead of calling this:

Rails.env == "production"

you can call this:

Rails.env.production?

So they aren't exactly equivalent, but they're fairly close. I haven't used Rails much yet, but I'd say #Rails.env is certainly the more visually attractive option due to using StringInquirer.