Ruby is an absolutely pure object-oriented scripting language written in C and designed with Perl and Python capabilities in mind. While its roots are in Japan, Ruby is slowly but surely gaining ground in the US. The goal of Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of Ruby and author of this book, is to incorporate the strengths of languages like Perl, Python, Lisp and Smalltalk. Ruby is a genuine attempt to combine the best of everything in the scripting world. Since 1993, Ruby mailing lists have been established, Web pages have formed, and a community has grown around it. The language itself is very...

The Ruby Programming Language is the authoritative guide to Ruby and provides comprehensive coverage of versions 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. It was written (and illustrated ) by an all-star team:

• David Flanagan, bestselling author of programming language "bibles" (including JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Java in a Nutshell) and committer to the Ruby Subversion repository.



• Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator, designer and lead developer of Ruby and author of Ruby in a Nutshell, which has been expanded and...