Why are methods in Ruby documentation preceded by a hash sign?

Question

When I see any Ruby method printed in text, it usually appears as:

Class#method

or

#method

Now, I would u

Answer 1

All the answers above you list are correct. The one thing I would add is that the documentation style you said you would perfer

Class.method

would be easily confused with class methods. Since you can call class methods in ruby using the above syntax:

class Foo
  def self.say_hi
    puts "hi"
  end
end

Foo.say_hi    # => prints "hi"