Ruby has gained some attention through the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework, but the language alone is worthy of more consideration — a lot more. This book offers a definition explanation of this powerful and extremely flexible language, which draws inspiration from Lisp, Smalltalk and Perl, but uses a grammar that's easy for C and Java programmers to learn. With The Ruby Programming Language, you will quickly learn your way around versions 1.8 and 1.9, and discover why this pure object-oriented language is also suitable for procedural and functional programming styles. You'll learn Ruby's lexical structure, primary expressions, conditionals, syntax, classes, the data it manipulates, and more. Ruby blurs the distinction between language and platform, so this book includes a tour of the core Ruby API. But the primary subject is the language itself, including: Ruby's lexical structure including basic issues like character set, case sensitivity and reserved words Numbers, strings, ranges, arrays, and other data that Ruby programs can manipulate, plus basic features of all Ruby objects Primary expressions in Ruby — literals, variable references, method invocations and assignments Conditionals, loops (including blocks and iterator methods), exceptions and other Ruby expressions Ruby's method definition and invocation syntax, and the invokeable objects known as procs and lambdas An explanation of closures in Ruby and an exploration of functional programming techniques Classes and modules in Ruby, inheritance, method visibility, mixing modules and the method name resolution algorithm Ruby APIs that allow a program to inspect and manipulate itself, and metaprogrammingtechniques that use the APIs to extend Ruby's syntax for easier programming A quick tutorial of the Ruby platform — the most important classes and methods, text processing, numeric computation, collections, input/output, networking and threads The Ruby Programming Language also covers the top-level Ruby programming environment, including global variables and functions, command-line arguments supported by the Ruby interpreter, and Ruby's security mechanism. If you're an experienced programmer who wants a look at this language in depth, this easy-to-follow guide is invaluable.

This guide to Ruby covers version 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. Written for experienced programmers new to Ruby, and for current Ruby programmers who want to challenge their understanding and mastery of the language, the book documents Ruby definitively but without the formality of a language specification. It begins with a quick-start tutorial, then explains the language in detail from the bottom up. Also included is a thorough introduction to the API of the Ruby platform, demonstrating, with heavily commented example code, Ruby's facility for text processing numeric manipulation, collections, input/output, networking, and concurrency. The book is an updated and expanded version of the publisher's Ruby in a Nutshell by Yukihiro Matsumoto. Flanagan is a programmer and author. Matsumoto is the creator, designer, and lead developer of Ruby. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Ruby Programming Language is the authoritative guide to Ruby and provides comprehensive coverage of versions 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. It was written (and illustrated ) by an all-star team: David Flanagan, bestselling author of programming language bibles (including JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Java in a Nutshell) and committer to the Ruby Subversion repository. Yukihiro Matz Matsumoto, creator, designer and lead developer of Ruby and author of Ruby in a Nutshell, which has been expanded and revised to become this book. why the lucky stiff, artist and Ruby programmer extraordinaire. This book begins with a quick-start tutorial to the language, and then explains the language in detail from the bottom up: from lexical and syntactic structure to datatypes to expressions and statements and on through methods, blocks, lambdas, closures, classes and modules.

The book also includes a long and thorough introduction to the rich API of the Ruby platform, demonstrating — with heavily-commented example code — Ruby's facilities for text processing, numeric manipulation, collections, input/output, networking, and concurrency. An entire chapter is devoted to Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities.

The Ruby Programming Language documents the Ruby language definitively but without the formality of a language specification. It is written for experienced programmers who are new to Ruby, and for current Ruby programmers who want to challenge their understanding and increase their mastery of the language.