A Few Facets

An Exploratory Introduction to Ruby

by Bruce Williams

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1

 My Background
Developer, Designer, Language Geek

ist since 2001

Also: Erlang, Io, Haskell, OCaml, ObjC,
More next week...
Python, Perl, Java, Lisp, Scheme, C/C++...

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 Thank You.

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 I believe people want to express themselves when
they program. [...] I tried to make people enjoy
programming and concentrate on the fun and
creative part of programming when they use Ruby.

松本行弘
MASUMOTO Yukihiro, “matz”

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 Ruby is a dynamic, reflective,
general purpose object-oriented
programming language.
Wikipedia.org

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5
 Ruby is a lightweight, dynamic,
reflective, general purpose
object-oriented programming
language.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5
 Ruby is a lightweight, dynamic,
reflective, general purpose
object-oriented (and slightly
functional) programming
language.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5
 Ruby is a lightweight, dynamic,
reflective, general purpose
object-oriented (and slightly
functional) programming
language with elegant, flexible
syntax.

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 Basic Literals

"Scotland on Rails".split(' ') 5.times do

puts "Simple is Beautiful!"
%("Go back," he said irritably.).size end

do_something_with(:this_symbol) 12.5.between?(12, 13)

String, Symbol Fixnum, Float

['this', :is, 1, "Array"]

{:hashes => 1, 'are' => 'unordered'}

%w(and so is this right here)

Hash.new('and', :can_be, 'created', 'several ways')
# {'and' => :can_be, 'created' => 'several ways'}
and_this = []
or_this = Array.new

Array Hash
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 Variable Assignment & Scope
(main)
$global_variables
(class/module)
Constants or CONSTANTS, ::
(instance)
@@class_variables
@instance_variables
(method)
normal_variables

age = 13 age += 1

Assignment Reassignment
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 Control Structures

if car.needs_gas? unless car.needs_gas?

car.fill_up! car.drive 40
else
else
# 'else' clause not recommended
car.drive 40
car.fill_up!
end
end

car.fill_up! if car.needs_gas?
car.drive 40 unless car.needs_gas?

If Unless
case car.model
while car.can_drive? 40
when 'Ford'
car.drive 40
# ...
end
when 'Porsche'
# ...
loop do
else
# Something else # do something forever
end end

Case Loops
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 Blocks

%w(one two three).each do |item|

File.open('output.txt', 'w') do |f|
puts item
f.puts 'This is some output'
end
end

Iteration Transactions

<% admin do %>

button.on :click do |event|
<p>Admin-only content</p>
window.close!
<% end %>
end
<p>Normal Content<p>

Handlers Conditional Yield

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 Methods

def say_hello def say(text)

puts "Hello!" puts text
end end
say_hello say "Okay!"
# Hello! # Okay

Simple With Arguments

def remove_files(*files) def do_it(&block)
# `files' is an Array block.call # same as `yield'
files.each do |file| end
FileUtils.rm file
end do_it do
end puts "Hi"
remove_files 'foo.txt', 'bar.dat' end

“Splat” Args Assigning a Block

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 Classes
class Car
attr_reader :make, :model, :year class Coupe < Car
def initialize(make, model, year) def initialize(*args)
@make, @model, @year = make, model, year
super
end
def drive(distance)
@doors = 2
puts "Drove a #{@year} #{@make} #{@model} #{distance}" end
end end
end

Defining a Class Inheritance/Polymorphism

vroom = Car.new "Audi", "A4", 2008

vroom.drive '20km'
# Drove a 2008 Audi A4 20km

Instantiation
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 Enumerable

files = ['zsh.tar', 'index.xml']

files.each do |file| files.map do |file|
FileUtils.cp file, '/destination/dir' [file, File.stat(file).size]
end end
# [["zsh.tar", 71680], ["index.xml", 68009]]

each map/collect

files.select { |f| File.stat(f) > 70_000 } files.inject({}) do |manifest, filename|

# ['zsh.tar'] manifest[filename] = File.stat(filename).size
files.detect { |f| File.stat(f) > 70_000 } manifest
# 'zsh.tar' end
files.reject { |f| File.stat(f) > 70_000 } # {"zsh.tar" => 71680, "index.xml" => 68009}
# ['index.xml']

select, reject, detect inject

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 Mixins

class Car

module Conversions include Conversions

KM_PER_MILE = 1.609 def drive(distance, unit=:km)

distance = if unit == :km
def mi_to_km(miles) distance
miles * KM_PER_MILE
else
end
mi_to_km(distance)
def km_to_mi(kilometers) end
kilometers / KM_PER_MILE # Do something
end end

end # ...

end

Module Definition Include

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 Dynamic Features

"name".methods
# ["%", "select", "[]=", "inspect", "<<", "each_byte",
"method", "clone", "gsub", "casecmp", "public_methods",
"to_str", "partition", "tr_s", "empty?", ... obj.methods.select do |n|
n =~ /[a-z]$/
end.each do |meth|
obj.instance_eval <<-CODE
alias :original_#{meth} :#{meth}
def #{meth}(*args, &block)
puts "Doing #{meth}..."
Listing Methods result = original_#{meth}(*args, &block)
puts "Done doing #{meth}, result: \#{result}"
result
end
name = 'John' CODE
obj.instance_eval <<CODE end
def yell
puts "My name is #{name}!!!"
end
CODE
obj.yell
# My name is John!!!

Dynamic Evaluation
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 Questions?

Slides will be available from codefluency.com and/or the conference website.

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