Hey y'all, I noticed that rbenv version-file will default to printing "${RBENV_ROOT}/version" if the following two things are true:

• no directory was specified as an argument, and
• no .ruby-version was found for either RBENV_DIR or PWD.

There is a test which covers this behavior here, whose description states "prints global file if no version files exist".

I get why ${RBENV_ROOT}/version would be printed if it truly exists and performs the setting of the Ruby version, but printing it even if it doesn't exist is counter-intuitive to me. The language (set by /usr/local/rbenv/version) seems to imply that the file actually exists, as does the language detect the file that sets in the "Summary" comments at the top of the command file.

Perhaps that interpretation is subjective; I'm happy to stipulate that. But I might be confused if I had encountered this behavior in the wild and I hadn't yet read the source code. From the way this person phrased their question, I might not be the only one who is similarly confused.

I'm guessing there's some context I'm missing which explains the behavior, just curious what that is. Is it perhaps correct to say that the filepath printed by the command represents "where the version is expected to reside", rather than "where the version does reside"? Thanks for your help.