Ruby In A Nutshell

by Yukihiro Matsumoto

Ruby is an absolutely pure object-oriented scripting language written in C and designed with Perl and Python capabilities in mind. While its roots are in Japan, Ruby is slowly but surely gaining ground in the US. The goal of Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of Ruby and author of this book, is to incorporate the strengths of languages like Perl, Python, Lisp and Smalltalk. Ruby is a genuine attempt to combine the best of everything in the scripting world. Since 1993, Ruby mailing lists have been established, Web pages have formed, and a community has grown around it. The language itself is very good at text processing and is notable for its broad object orientation. Ruby is portable and runs under GNU/Linux (and other Unices) as well as DOS, MS Windows and Mac. With Ruby in a Nutshell , Matsumoto offers a practical reference to the features of this new language including the command-line options, syntax, built-in variables, functions, and many commonly used classes and modules. This guide covers the current stable version of Ruby (1.6), yet is applicable to the development version 1.7 and the next planned stable version 1.8. You will find a thorough description of Ruby's language syntax, and a description of the core functionality built into the standard Ruby interpreter, which has more than 800 built-in methods in 42 classes and modules. Ruby finds its power through its built-in libraries, and this handy volume take you through the many useful libraries that come with the standard Ruby distribution--from network access via HTTP and CGI programming, to data persistence using the DBM library. This book concludes with coverage of the unique tools that come with Ruby, including the debugger, profiler, and irb (or interactive ruby.) Find out how Ruby combines the strengths of other languages, and why it has captured the interest of so many open source programmers. As part of the successful "in a nutshell" series of books from O'Reilly & Associates, Ruby in a Nutshell is for readers who want a single desktop reference for all their needs.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Computer Science, Technical, Reference, Computers

230 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2001

About the author

"Matsumoto Yukihiro, a.k.a. Matz, is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI).

Matsumoto's real name is the kanji 松本行弘, but it is normally written in hiragana, as まつもとゆきひろ.

Born in Osaka Prefecture, he was raised in Tottori Prefecture from the age of four. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school. He graduated with an information science degree from Tsukuba University, where he associated himself with research departments dealing with programming languages and compilers.

As of 2006, Matsumoto is the head of the research and development department at the Network Applied Communication Laboratory, an open source systems integrator company in Shimane Prefecture. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and served as a missionary for the church. Matsumoto is married and has four children."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro...

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great desk reference, but not something to rely on to learn Ruby.

[Ibrahim Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

it is a good reference to ruby but it is not updated .support me a lot information how the built in ruby libraries .