The Book of Ruby

Acknowledgments; Introduction; What Is Ruby?; What Is Rails?; Matters of Ruby Style; How to Read This Book; Digging Deeper; Making Sense of the Text; Downloading Ruby; Getting the Source Code of the Sample Programs; Running Ruby Programs; The Ruby Library Documentation; Chapter 1: Strings, Numbers, Classes, and Objects; 1.1 Getting and Putting Input; 1.2 Strings and Embedded Evaluation; 1.3 Numbers; 1.4 Comments; 1.5 Testing a Condition: if..then; 1.6 Local and Global Variables; 1.7 Classes and Objects; Chapter 2: Class Hierarchies, Attributes, and Class Variables; 2.1 Superclasses and Subclasses; 2.2 Passing Arguments to the Superclass; 2.3 Accessor Methods; 2.4 Attribute Readers and Writers; 2.5 Calling Methods of a Superclass; 2.6 Class Variables; Chapter 3: Strings and Ranges; 3.1 User-Defined String Delimiters; 3.2 Backquotes; 3.3 String Handling; 3.4 Ranges; Chapter 4: Arrays and Hashes; 4.1 Arrays; 4.2 Hashes; Chapter 5: Loops and Iterators; 5.1 for Loops; 5.2 Blocks and Block Parameters; 5.3 Iterating upto and downto; 5.4 Multiple Iterator Arguments; 5.5 while Loops; 5.6 until Loops; 5.7 loop; Chapter 6: Conditional Statements; 6.1 if..then..else; 6.2 and, or, and not; 6.3 Negation; 6.4 if..elsif; 6.5 unless; 6.6 if and unless Modifiers; 6.7 Case Statements; Chapter 7: Methods; 7.1 Class Methods; 7.2 What Are Class Methods For?; 7.3 Class Variables; 7.4 Ruby Constructors: new or initialize?; 7.5 Singleton Methods; 7.6 Singleton Classes; 7.7 Overriding Methods; 7.8 Public, Protected, and Private Methods; Chapter 8: Passing Arguments and Returning Values; 8.1 Summarizing Instance, Class, and Singleton Methods; 8.2 Returning Values; 8.3 Returning Multiple Values; 8.4 Default and Multiple Arguments; 8.5 Assignment and Parameter Passing; 8.6 Integers Are Special; 8.7 The One-Way-In, One-Way-Out Principle; 8.8 Modifying Receivers and Yielding New Objects; 8.9 Potential Side Effects of Reliance on Argument Values; 8.10 Parallel Assignment; Chapter 9: Exception Handling; 9.1 rescue: Execute Code When Error Occurs; 9.2 ensure: Execute Code Whether or Not an Error Occurs; 9.3 else: Execute Code When No Error Occurs; 9.4 Error Numbers; 9.5 retry: Attempt to Execute Code Again After an Error; 9.6 raise: Reactivate a Handled Error; Chapter 10: Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas; 10.1 What Is a Block?; 10.2 Line Breaks Are Significant; 10.3 Nameless Functions; 10.4 Look Familiar?; 10.5 Blocks and Arrays; 10.6 Procs and Lambdas; 10.7 Block or Hash?; 10.8 Creating Objects from Blocks; 10.9 What Is a Closure?; 10.10 yield; 10.11 Blocks Within Blocks; 10.12 Passing Named Proc Arguments; 10.13 Precedence Rules; 10.14 Blocks as Iterators; Chapter 11: Symbols; 11.1 Symbols and Strings; 11.2 Symbols and Variables; 11.3 Why Use Symbols?; Chapter 12: Modules and Mixins; 12.1 A Module Is Like a Class ...; 12.2 Module Methods; 12.3 Modules as Namespaces; 12.4 Included Modules, or "Mixins"; 12.5 Name Conflicts; 12.6 Alias Methods; 12.7 Mix In with Care!; 12.8 Including Modules from Files; Chapter 13: Files and IO; 13.1 Opening and Closing Files; 13.2 Characters and Compatibility; 13.3 Files and Directories; 13.4 Copying Files; 13.5 Directory Inquiries; 13.6 A Discursion into Recursion; 13.7 Sorting by Size; Chapter 14: YAML; 14.1 Converting to YAML; 14.2 Nested Sequences; 14.3 Saving YAML Data; 14.4 Omitting Variables on Saving; 14.5 Multiple Documents, One File; 14.6 A YAML Database; 14.7 Adventures in YAML; Chapter 15: Marshal; 15.1 Saving and Loading Data; 15.2 Omitting Variables on Saving; 15.3 Saving Singletons; Chapter 16: Regular Expressions; 16.1 Making Matches; 16.2 Match Groups; 16.3 MatchData; 16.4 Prematch and Postmatch; 16.5 Greedy Matching; 16.6 String Methods; 16.7 File Operations; Chapter 17: Threads; 17.1 Creating Threads; 17.2 Running Threads; 17.3 Going Native; 17.4 The Main Thread; 17.5 Thread Status; 17.6 Ensuring That a Thread Executes; 17.7 Thread Priorities; 17.8 The Main Thread Priority; 17.9 Mutexes; 17.10 Fibers; Chapter 18: Debugging and Testing; 18.1 IRB: Interactive Ruby; 18.2 Debugging; 18.3 Unit Testing; Chapter 19: Ruby on Rails; 19.1 Installing Rails; 19.2 Model-View-Controller; 19.3 A First Ruby on Rails Application; 19.4 Create a Rails Application; 19.5 Create a Controller; 19.6 Anatomy of a Simple Rails Application; 19.7 The Generate Controller Script Summarized; 19.8 Create a View; 19.9 Rails Tags; 19.10 Let's Make a Blog!; Chapter 20: Dynamic Programming; 20.1 Self-Modifying Programs; 20.2 eval; 20.3 Special Types of eval; 20.4 Adding Variables and Methods; 20.5 Creating Classes at Runtime; 20.6 Bindings; 20.7 send; 20.8 Removing Methods; 20.9 Handling Missing Methods; 20.10 Writing Programs at Runtimmmmmme; 20.11 Exploring Further; Documenting Ruby with RDoc; Installing MySQL for Ruby on Rails; Downloading MySQL; Installing MySQL; Configuring MySQL; Can't Find the Database?; Further Reading; Books; Ebooks; Websites; Ruby and Rails Development Software; IDEs and Editors; Web Servers; Databases; Ruby Implementations; Colophon; Updates;