Ruby Pocket Reference

Michael James Fitzgerald0596514816, 9780596514815

Although Ruby is an easy language to learn, in the heat of action you may find that you can’t remember the correct syntax for a conditional or the name of a method. This handy pocket reference offers brief yet clear explanations of Ruby’s core components, from operators to reserved words to data structures to method syntax, highlighting those key features that you’ll likely use every day when coding Ruby.Whether you’ve come to Ruby because of the Rails web development framework – Ruby’s killer app – or simply because it’s a relatively clean, powerful and expressive language that’s useful for a lot of applications, the Ruby Pocket Reference is organized to help you find what you need quickly. This book not only will get you up to speed on how Ruby works, it provides you with a handy reference you can use anywhere, anytime.In this book, you find essential information on: Reserved words, operators, comments, numbers, variables, ranges, and symbols Predefined variables andglobal constants Conditional statements, method use, classes, and modules (mixins) Lists of methods from the Object, String, Array, and Hash classes and the Kernel module sprintf andtime formatting directories Interactive Ruby (irb) and the Ruby debugger Ruby documentation You also get information on the RubyGems package utility and Rake, a build tool similar to make.. If you’re using Ruby daily and just want the facts-fast-Ruby Pocket Reference is your book.

---

Table of contents :
Ruby Pocket Reference……Page 1
Contents……Page 4
Conventions Used in This Book……Page 8
Running Ruby……Page 9
Running the Ruby Interpreter……Page 10
Associating File Types on Windows……Page 12
Reserved Words……Page 14
Operators……Page 16
Comments……Page 17
Variables……Page 18
Instance Variables……Page 19
Parallel Assignment of Variables……Page 20
Predefined Variables……Page 21
Pseudovariables……Page 24
Global Constants……Page 25
Methods……Page 26
Return Values……Page 27
Method Name Conventions……Page 28
Variable Arguments……Page 29
Blocks……Page 30
The yield statement……Page 31
Procs……Page 32
Multiple tests……Page 34
The elsif statement……Page 35
The unless Statement……Page 36
The while Statement……Page 37
The until Statement……Page 38
The case Statement……Page 39
The for Loop……Page 40
Classes……Page 41
Instance Variables……Page 43
Accessors……Page 45
Class Variables……Page 46
Singletons……Page 47
Public, Private, or Protected……Page 49
Modules and Mixins……Page 51
Creating a New File……Page 54
ARGV and ARGF……Page 55
Renaming and Deleting Files……Page 56
File Inquiries……Page 57
File Modes and Ownership……Page 58
The IO Class……Page 59
Exception Handling……Page 61
The raise Method……Page 62
Object Class……Page 63
Object Instance Methods……Page 64
Kernel Module……Page 69
Sprintf flags and field types……Page 75
String Class……Page 79
Here Documents……Page 80
Character Encoding……Page 82
Regular Expressions……Page 83
String Methods……Page 88
String instance methods……Page 89
String unpack directives……Page 99
Creating Arrays……Page 101
Array Instance Methods……Page 103
Array pack directives……Page 109
Hash Class……Page 113
Creating Hashes……Page 114
Hash Instance Methods……Page 115
Time Formatting Directives……Page 120
Interactive Ruby (irb)……Page 121
Ruby Debugger……Page 124
Ruby Documentation……Page 126
RDoc Options……Page 128
RubyGems……Page 132
Rake……Page 138
Ruby Resources……Page 140
Glossary……Page 141
Index……Page 158