Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide: (Pragmatic Bookshelf Ser.)

Ruby is an increasingly popular, fully object-oriented dynamic programming language, hailed by many practitioners as the finest and most useful language available today. When Ruby first burst onto the scene in the Western world, the Pragmatic Programmers were there with the definitive reference manual, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide. Now in its Second Edition, author Dave Thomas has expanded the famous Pickaxe book with over 200 pages of new content, covering all the new and improved language features of Ruby 1.8 and standard library modules. The Pickaxe contains four major sections: An acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby. The definitive reference to the language. Complete documentation on all built-in classes, modules, and methods Complete descriptions of all 98 standard libraries. If you enjoyed the First Edition, you'll appreciate the new and expanded content, including: enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby's capabilities using C-language extensions.Programming for the world-wide web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems and other web services. There's even a new chapter on unit testing. This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. "Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I'm working with it this book is at my side" --Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks

Table of Contents:
Contents FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION PREFACE ROAD MAP PART I--FACETS OF RUBY 1 GETTING STARTED Installing Ruby Running Ruby Ruby Documentation: RDoc and ri 2 RUBY.NEW Ruby Is an Object-Oriented Language Some Basic Ruby Arrays and Hashes Control Structures Regular Expressions Blocks and Iterators Reading and 'Riting Onward and Upward 3 CLASSES, OBJECTS, AND VARIABLES Inheritance and Messages Objects and Attributes Class Variables and Class Methods Access Control Variables CONTAINERS, BLOCKS, AND ITERATORS Containers Blocks and Iterators Containers Everywhere 5 STANDARD TYPES Numbers Strings Ranges Regular Expressions 6 MORE ABOUT METHODS Defining a Method Calling a Method 7 EXPRESSIONS Operator Expressions Miscellaneous Expressions Assignment Conditional Execution Case Expressions Loops Variable Scope, Loops, and Blocks 8 EXCEPTIONS, CATCH, AND THROW The Exception Class Handling Exceptions Raising Exceptions Catch and Throw 9 MODULES Namespaces Mixins Iterators and the EnumerableModule Composing Modules Including Other Files 10 BASIC INPUT AND OUTPUT What Is an IO Object? Opening and Closing Files Reading and Writing Files Talking to Networks 11 THREADS AND PROCESSES Multithreading Controlling the Thread Scheduler Mutual Exclusion Running Multiple Processes 12 UNIT TESTING Test::Unit Framework Structuring Tests Organizing and Running Tests 13 WHEN TROUBLE STRIKES Ruby Debugger Interactive Ruby Editor Support But It Doesn'tWork! But It's Too Slow! PART II--RUBY IN ITS SETTING 14 RUBY AND ITS WORLD Command-Line Arguments Program Termination Environment Variables Where Ruby Finds Its Modules Build Environment 15 INTERACTIVE RUBY SHELL Command Line Configuration Commands Restrictions rtags and xmp 16 DOCUMENTING RUBY Adding RDoc to Ruby Code Adding RDoc to C Extensions Running RDoc Displaying Program Usage 17 PACKAGE MANAGEMENT WITH RUBYGEMS Installing RubyGems Installing Application Gems Installing and Using Gem Libraries Creating Your Own Gems 18 RUBY AND THE WEB Writing CGI Scripts Cookies Improving Performance Choice of Web Servers SOAP and Web Services More Information 19 RUBY TK Simple Tk Application Widgets Binding Events Canvas Scrolling Translating from Perl/Tk Documentation 20 RUBY AND MICROSOFT WINDOWS Getting Ruby for Windows Running Ruby Under Windows Win32API Windows Automation 21 EXTENDING RUBY Your First Extension Ruby Objects in C The Jukebox Extension Memory Allocation Ruby Type System Creating an Extension Embedding a Ruby Interpreter Bridging Ruby to Other Languages Ruby C Language API PART III--RUBY CRYSTALLIZED 22 THE RUBY LANGUAGE Source Layout The Basic Types Names Variables and Constants Predefined Variables Expressions Boolean Expressions if and unless Expressions case Expressions Loop Constructs Method Definition Invoking a Method Aliasing Class Definition Module Definitions Access Control Blocks, Closures, and Proc Objects Exceptions Catch and Throw 23 DUCK TYPING Classes Aren't Types Coding like a Duck Standard Protocols and Coercions Walk the Walk, Talk the Talk 24 CLASSES AND OBJECTS How Classes and Objects Interact Class and Module Definitions Top-Level Execution Environment Inheritance and Visibility Freezing Objects 25 LOCKING RUBY IN THE SAFE Safe Levels Tainted Objects 26 REFLECTION, OBJECTSPACE, AND DISTRIBUTED RUBY Looking at Objects Looking at Classes Calling Methods Dynamically System Hooks Tracing Your Program's Execution Marshaling and Distributed Ruby Compile Time? Runti

About the Author :
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt have more than 50 years combined experience, developing software for clients around the world. For the last 10 years they've been working together as The Pragmatic Programmers, helping clients write software and improve their development processes. They are authors of the best-selling The Pragmatic Programmer, and have written several other books. They speak at conferences globally, and are editors of IEEE Software's "Construction" column. Chad Fowler is co-director of Ruby Central, Inc., and remains an active, driving force in the Ruby community.