Why doesn't Ruby's IRB print_print correctly?

Question

Using Rails 4.0.4 and Ruby 2.1.1, and inside of an model's controller I want to use pp to check out an object. I have a call to debugger to pause execution and look around. However, pp seems to be truncating the out put of things and not allowing them to show up on multiple lines:

>pp ShopOrder

#<Shoporder id: 64, order_id: "142949823232-3232353652342", shop_id: 1, order_
status: "Completed", order_tests_queued: "2014-04-02 18:19:36", shipped_time: 
nil, shipping_address_name: "John Doe", total: 43.9, created_time: "2014-04-02
03:04:20", raw: "{\"order_id\":\"142949823232-3232353652342\",\"order_sta...">

 ( ^^ I did not truncated this for the question, it just ends this way ^^ )

I'm used to pp normally formatting this nicely and displaying it on multiple lines, more similar to what happens when using y ShopOrder to get the nicely formatted to_yaml output:

--- !ruby/object:Shoporder
attributes:
  id: 64
  order_id: 142949823232-3232353652342
  shop_id: 1
  order_status: Completed
  order_tests_queued: 2014-04-02 18:19:36.498044000 Z
  shipped_time: 
  shipping_address_name: John Doe
  total: 43.9
  created_time: 2014-04-02 03:04:20.000000000 Z
  ... (output continues correctly but has been truncated for this example )

Echo is enabled as irb_context.echo returns true

y and to_yaml are fine but at times I'd also like to be able to use pp

Why isn't this working as expected?

Answer 1

Use Awesome Print instead

It is (strangely) intended behavior for large objects.

Don't use pp from pretty_print use ap from awesome_print

Answer 2

If memory serves pp relies on a pretty_print method for its output. Perhaps something is defining that in your models, or overriding it and truncating the string returned by super.