Ruby In A Nutshell [Paperback]

Yukihiro Matsumoto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2001 | Series: In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)

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.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)

About the Author

Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz"), the creator of Ruby, is a professional programmer who worked for the Japanese open source company, netlab.jp. Matz is also known as one of the open source evangelists in Japan. He's released several open source products, including cmail, the emacs-based mail user agent, written entirely in emacs lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside of Japan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (November 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002149
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002145
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #631,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book does a good job as a reference, January 1, 2002

By 

Garance A. Drosehn "ScatterbotsNY" (Troy, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ruby In A Nutshell (Paperback)

I'm just starting to learn the Ruby language, and come into it with a background of having used about 20-25 other languages (to some extent). If you are brand new to Ruby and want to learn it, then the book "Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" is probably a better place to start than this book.

But once you have an understanding of the basic ideas of Ruby, then you're going to want a reference of all the standard Ruby "objects", and what methods are supported by each class of objects. "Ruby in a Nutshell" calls itself "a desktop quick reference", and I think it does a good job of it. It covers a lot of ground, and tries to do it in as few words as necessary.

As to the language itself, I'd say that programmers familiar with Java or Objective-C would find Ruby an easy language to pick up, and to use for projects you might otherwise use Perl for. I haven't tried to use Python yet, so I can not compare Ruby to that language.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I'd skip this one., March 26, 2004

By 

Idiosyncrat (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruby In A Nutshell (Paperback)

The first couple of chapters are a good, concise reference to the core language, but the library reference is too stark-- most methods seem to have only one or two lines for description. Since this library reference is the bulk of the book, I don't think it's a good buy.

The library reference in the Thomas and Hunt book (Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide) is much nicer.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still a great reference to keep by your side, February 29, 2004

By 

John C. Dunbar (Sugar Land, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ruby In A Nutshell (Paperback)

The book I have (2002 copyright) is based on Ruby 1.6.5. I have Ruby version 1.8.1-11. So the book is missing certain improvements to this elegant object oriented language. But that didn't seem to be a problem for me when using the book while learning the language.

I keep this book by my side when programming Ruby because, like most O'Reilly Cookbooks, the answers to the basics are a quick flip of the pages away. I also use The Ruby Way which is also good in a text book kind of way -- it offers examples.

All the basic functions and Classes are documented in this Cookbook. Its as if the originator of the language, the author Yukihiro Matsumoto, squeezed all the fluff out of the documentation and only served up the critical calling conventions for all important statements, functions and Classes.

For updates on the functions you can also use online resources or the Help file that comes with the program itself.

This review was written in February of 2004 and version 2.0 of Ruby is said to be a complete re-write. But that release will not be out for another year or so. I would then guess that this book would be valid through 2005.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX