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Ruby

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A Hands-On Guide for the Adventurous
by Huw Collingbourne

Ruby is famous for being easy to learn, but most users only scratch the surface of what it can do. While other books focus on Ruby's trendier features, The Book of Ruby reveals the secret inner workings of one of the world's most popular programming languages, teaching you to write clear, maintainable code.

You'll start with the basics—types, data structures, and control flows—and progress to advanced features like blocks, mixins, metaclasses, and beyond. Rather than bog you down with a lot of theory, The Book of Ruby takes a hands-on approach and focuses on making you productive from day one. As you follow along, you’ll learn to:

  • Leverage Ruby's succinct and flexible syntax to maximize your productivity
  • Balance Ruby's functional, imperative, and object-oriented features
  • Write self-modifying programs using dynamic programming techniques
  • Create new fibers and threads to manage independent processes concurrently
  • Catch and recover from execution errors with robust exception handling
  • Develop powerful web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework

Each chapter includes a "Digging Deeper" section that shows you how Ruby works under the hood, so you'll never be caught off guard by its deceptively simple scoping, multithreading features, or precedence rules.

Whether you're new to programming or just new Ruby, The Book of Ruby is your guide to rapid, real-world software development with this unique and elegant language.

Detailed Solutions in Eight Programming Languages
by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan

Take the guesswork out using regular expressions to search and manipulate text. With this updated cookbook, you have access to hundreds of proven recipes for today's most popular programming languages - including C#, Java, JavaScript (including XRegExp), Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and VB.NET. As useful as regular expressions can be for programmers, their power doesn't come worry-free. This guide will deepen your understanding, no matter how much experience you have with this reliable tool. You'll learn powerful new tricks, steer clear of flavor-specific gotchas, and save valuable time with this huge library of solutions to difficult, real-world problems.

Understand the basics of regular expressions through a concise tutorial Use regular expressions effectively in several programming and scripting languages Learn how to validate and format input Manage words, lines, special characters, and numerical values Find solutions for using regular expressions in URLs, paths, markup, and data exchange Discover the nuances of more advanced regex features Experience how regular expressions' APIs, syntax, and behavior differ from language to language Write better regular expressions for custom needs

Concepts and Code
by Kevin C. Baird

There may be no better way to learn how to program than by dissecting real, representative examples written in your language of choice. Ruby by Example analyzes a series of Ruby scripts, examining how the code works, explaining the concepts it illustrates, and showing how to modify it to suit your needs. Baird's examples demonstrate key features of the language (such as inheritance, encapsulation, higher-order functions, and recursion), while simultaneously solving difficult problems (such as validating XML, creating a bilingual program, and creating command-line interfaces). Each chapter builds upon the previous, and each key concept is highlighted in the margin to make it easier for you to navigate the book.

You'll learn how to:

  • Use the interactive Ruby shell (irb) to learn key features of the language
  • Extend Ruby using RubyGems, the Ruby package manager
  • Create numerical utilities, as well as utilities that process and analyze HTML/XML
  • Implement purely functional and metaprogramming techniques to save time and effort
  • Optimize, profile, and test your code to make sure that it not only does its job, but does it well
  • Create web applications using Rails

Ruby is the fastest growing programming language today, and for good reason: Its elegant syntax and readable code make for prolific and happy programmers. But it can be difficult to understand and implement without a little help. Ruby by Example shows you how to take advantage of Ruby as you explore Ruby's fundamental concepts in action.

An Illustrated Guide to Ruby Internals
by Pat Shaughnessy

Ruby is a powerful programming language with a focus on simplicity, but beneath its elegant syntax it performs countless unseen tasks.

Ruby Under a Microscope gives you a hands-on look at Ruby’s core, using extensive diagrams and thorough explanations to show you how Ruby is implemented (no C skills required). Author Pat Shaughnessy takes a scientific approach, laying out a series of experiments with Ruby code to take you behind the scenes of how programming languages work. You’ll even find information on JRuby and Rubinius (two alternative implementations of Ruby), as well as in-depth explorations of Ruby’s garbage collection algorithm.

  • How a few computer science concepts underpin Ruby’s complex implementation
  • How Ruby executes your code using a virtual machine
  • How classes and modules are the same inside Ruby
  • How Ruby employs algorithms originally developed for Lisp
  • How Ruby uses grammar rules to parse and understand your code
  • How your Ruby code is translated into a different language by a compiler

No programming language needs to be a black box. Whether you’re already intrigued by language implementation or just want to dig deeper into Ruby, you’ll find Ruby Under a Microscope a fascinating way to become a better programmer.

Covers Ruby 2.x, 1.9 and 1.8

by David A. Black and Joseph Leo III

The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Third Editionis a beautifully written tutorial that begins with your first Ruby program and takes you all the way to sophisticated topics like reflection, threading, and recursion. Ruby masters David A. Black and Joe Leo distill their years of knowledge for you, concentrating on the language and its uses so you can use Ruby in any way you choose. Updated for Ruby 2.5.

Useful Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems
by Steve Pugh

Are you spending valuable time on work a well-trained monkey could do? If so, Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts will teach you how to automate repetitive tasks using Ruby, one of the most powerful and easy-to-use programming languages around.

Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts provides 58 scripts that offer quick solutions to problems like system administration, manipulating images, and managing a website. After getting your feet wet creating simple scripts to automate tasks like file compression and decompression, you’ll learn how to create powerful web crawlers, security scripts, and full-fledged libraries and applications, as well as how to:

  • Rename files, disable processes, change permissions, and modify users
  • Manipulate strings, encrypt files, and sort efficiently
  • Validate web links, check for orphan files, and generate forms
  • Mass edit photos, extract image information, and create thumbnails
  • Parse CSV files and scrape links, images, and pages from the Web

And as a nod to our security friends, you’ll even learn how to use Ruby to write Metasploit exploits. For each script you get the code, a discussion of how it works, and tips on how to customize it to solve real-world problems. By the time you’re finished, we think you’ll agree that Ruby is a wicked cool way to get things done.