The Ruby Way

Hal Fulton has two degrees in computer science. He has taught at the community college level and also has more than a decade of industry experience as a programmer. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society.

Introduction.


1. Ruby in Review.


Some Words on Object Orientation. Basic Ruby Syntax and Semantics. OOP in Ruby. Dynamic Aspects of Ruby. Training Your Intuition: Things to Remember.



2. Simple Data Tasks.


Strings. Regular Expressions. Numbers. Times and Dates. Summary.



3. Manipulating Structured Data.


Working with Arrays. Working with Hashes. Working with Stacks and Queues. Working with Trees. Working with Graphs. Summary.



4. External Data Manipulation.


Working with Files and Directories. Performing Higher-Level Data Access. Connecting to External Databases. Summary.



5. OOP and Dynamicity in Ruby.


Everyday OOP Tasks. More Advanced Techniques. Working in Advanced Programming Disciplines. Summary.



6. Graphical Interfaces for Ruby.


Ruby/Tk. Ruby/GTK. FX/Ruby (FOX). Other GUIs. Summary.



7. Ruby Threads.


Creating and Manipulating Threads. Synchronizing Threads. Summary.



8. Scripting and System Administration.


Running External Programs. Command-Line Options and Arguments. The Shell Library. Accessing Environment Variables. Scripting in Microsoft Windows. Working with Files, Directories, and Trees. Miscellaneous Scripting Tasks. Summary.



9. Network and Web Programming.


Network Servers. Network Clients. Ruby and the Web Server. Ruby and CGI Programming. Distributed Ruby. XML Parsing in Ruby. Summary.



Appendix A. From Perl to Ruby.


Appendix B. From Python to Ruby.


Appendix C. Tools and Utilities.


Appendix D. Resources on the Web (and Elsewhere).


Appendix E. What's New in Ruby 1.8.


Index.