Ruby is an agile object-oriented language, borrowing some of the best features from LISP, Smalltalk, Perl, CLU, and other languages. Its popularity has grown tremendously in the five years since the first edition of this book.
The Ruby Way takes a “how-to” approach to Ruby programming with the bulk of the material consisting of more than 400 examples arranged by topic. Each example answers the question “How do I do this in Ruby?” Working along with the author, you are presented with the task description and a discussion of the technical constraints. This is followed by a step-by-step presentation of one good solution. Along the way, the author provides detailed commentary and explanations to aid your understanding.
1 Ruby in Review
2 Working with Strings
3 Working with Regular Expressions
4 Internationalization in Ruby
5 Performing Numerical Calculations
6 Symbols and Ranges
7 Working with Times and Dates
8 Arrays, Hashes, and Other Enumerables
9 More Advanced Data Structures
10 I/O and Data Storage
..etc..
"I use the first edition of Hal's book frequently, to learn about details and style in Ruby, because it covers many topics I can find nowhere else. The new edition is even more comprehensive and will be even more valuable."
--Ron Jeffries--
Agile author and speaker
"Ruby's a wonderful language--but sometimes you just want to get something done. Hal's book gives you the solution and teaches a good bit about why that solution is good Ruby."
--Martin Fowler--
Chief Scientist, Thought Works
Author of patterns of Enterprise
Application Architecture