- Paperback: 222 pages
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (20 Nov 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0596002149
- ISBN-13: 978-0596002145
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.6 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
807,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #77 in Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Programming > Languages > Ruby
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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.
From the Publisher
Written by Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz"), creator of the language, Ruby in a Nutshell is a practical reference guide covering everything from Ruby syntax to the specifications of its standard class libraries. The book is based on Ruby 1.6, and is applicable to development versions 1.7 and the next planned stable version 1.8. 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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Ruby in a Nutshell" provides a nice reference to Ruby's builtin classes and standard library, but that's about it. Unlike other "Nutshell" books, it doesn't go beyond the online documentation.
The indexing and layout is poor; finding the relevant page should not involve having to hunt through the index. The information that is provided is often incomplete or misleading.
The middle chapters of Thomas and Hunt's "Programming Ruby" still remains the most useful source of information on the Ruby classes; "Ruby in a Nutshell" is simply a nicely printed version of a few old documentation pages.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Overall a good reference book. Having used Ruby a lot over the last few years, I'd also used this book a lot.
It's mostly useful for an experienced Ruby programmer, as there's gaps in the detail meaning you have to work it out, read the source-code or search the web in order to understand it fully; it often feels more like a big 'Pocket Reference'.
It's mostly useful for an experienced Ruby programmer, as there's gaps in the detail meaning you have to work it out, read the source-code or search the web in order to understand it fully; it often feels more like a big 'Pocket Reference'.
If you could take the 'Ruby in Review' section from 'The Ruby Way' (esp. the 'Training your Intuition' bit) and fill in several of the explicit details -- e.g *all* the argument and return value types, complex pattern matching, Finalizers, Tk, etc, etc -- this would not only be a bigger book (;-) it would become a great deal more thumbed-through. As it is, I tend to read the source-code a lot.
Despite all this, it had helped a great deal in my early days, and is still small enough, clear enough and well-arranged enough that I add my notes to _this_ book rather than anywhere else. My copy's full of penciled-in notes.
The downside is that Ruby 1.8's here, now, and some very important additions, like StringIO and Unit Testing (and possibly YAML) will hopefully mean Ruby in a Nutshell v2 is around the corner...
If you get this book, get 'The Ruby Way' as well, and it will all make a lot more sense.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Nice neat book, not what I expected to have when it mentioned that it was a nutshell, but it was a fast read, nice organiztion, and lovely langauge to learn. you still need to refer back to the online documentation, and other books may be :) such as programming Ruby by David Thomas, this works like the pocket reference, if you already know programming, its a quite fast read, no fluf
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