Ruby in a nutshell : a desktop quick reference

I've lost track of the number of times in the first two chapters where I either read a sentence that had no clear meaning, or where I saw an example that was just plain incorrect. Page 12: "A symbol is an object corresponding to an identifier or variable." Uh, what? That's the complete explanation for this language construct. Page 64: "arr.slice(n, len) Deletes the partial string specified and returns it." Followed by an example obviously copied from String::slice on page 54, which has the exact same example code except using 's' instead of 'a'. But page 64 is supposed to be describing arrays, not strings, so the description and example are just plain wrong. It goes on and on. I had high hopes for this book given my past experience with O'Reilly Nutshell books, but this book is just not ready to go to print yet, and obviously has been very poorly proofread. Sadly it's been printed and it's out there in the world, so your best bet is to just avoid it until O'Reilly publishes a 2nd edition that fixes all of these mistakes. 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. 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. Ruby in a Nutshell 1 Contents 2 Foreword 4 Preface 5 How This Book Is Organized 6 Conventions Used in This Book 7 Comments and Questions 8 Acknowledgments 9 Chapter 1. Introduction 10 Section 1.1. Ruby's Elegance 11 Section 1.2. Ruby in Action 14 Chapter 2. Language Basics 16 Section 2.1. Command-Line Options 17 Section 2.2. Environment Variables 20 Section 2.3. Lexical Conventions 22 Section 2.4. Literals 24 Section 2.5. Variables 31 Section 2.6. Operators 34 Section 2.7. Methods 37 Section 2.8. Control Structures 41 Section 2.9. Object-Oriented Programming 45 Section 2.10. Security 49 Chapter 3. Built-in Library Reference 53 Section 3.1. Predefined Variables 54 Section 3.2. Predefined Global Constants 57 Section 3.3. Built-in Functions 59 Section 3.4. Built-in Library 68 Chapter 4. Standard Library Reference 136 Section 4.1. Standard Library 137 Chapter 5. Ruby Tools 184 Section 5.1. Standard Tools 185 Section 5.2. Additional Tools 192 Section 5.3. Ruby Application Archive 194 Chapter 6. Ruby Updates 195 Section 6.1. Summary of Changes 196 Section 6.2. Changes from 1.6.5 to 1.7.1 197 Section 6.3. The Future of Ruby 199 Section 6.4. Participate in Ruby 200 Colophon 201 Written by Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the language, Ruby Essentials is a practical, concise reference covering everything from Ruby syntax to the specifications of its standard class libraries. It is based on Ruby 1.6, but its contents will remain applicable to future versions of Ruby, as well. This quick start guide provides an introduction to the language, examples, and language reference to get you going. Introduces Ruby's object-oriented programming capabilities, detailing command-line options, syntax, built-in variables, functions, commonly used classes and modules, environment variables, operators, methods, and security.