With a block given, forms the substrings ("lines") that are the result of splitting +self+ at each occurrence of the given line separator +line_sep+; passes each line to the block; returns +self+: s = <<~EOT This is the first line. This is line two. This is line four. This is line five. EOT s.each_line {|line| p line } Output: "This is the first line.\n" "This is line two.\n" "\n" "This is line four.\n" "This is line five.\n" With a different +line_sep+: s.each_line(' is ') {|line| p line } Output: "This is " "the first line.\nThis is " "line two.\n\nThis is " "line four.\nThis is " "line five.\n" With +chomp+ as +true+, removes the trailing +line_sep+ from each line: s.each_line(chomp: true) {|line| p line } Output: "This is the first line." "This is line two." "" "This is line four." "This is line five." With an empty string as +line_sep+, forms and passes "paragraphs" by splitting at each occurrence of two or more newlines: s.each_line('') {|line| p line } Output: "This is the first line.\nThis is line two.\n\n" "This is line four.\nThis is line five.\n" With no block given, returns an enumerator.