Ruby In A Nutshell

• #15 in Best Ruby Books

7 Reviews

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I'm just starting to learn the Ruby language, and come into it with a background of having used about 20-25 other languages (to some extent). If you are brand new to Ruby and want to learn it, then the book "Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" is probably a better place to start than this book.

But once you have an understanding of the basic ideas of Ruby, then you're going to want a reference of all the standard Ruby "objects", and what methods are supported by each class of objects. "Ruby in a Nutshell" calls itself "a desktop quick reference", and I think it does a good job of it. It covers a lot of ground, and tries to do it in as few words as necessary.

As to the language itself, I'd say that programmers familiar with Java or Objective-C would find Ruby an easy language to pick up, and to use for projects you might otherwise use Perl for. I haven't tried to use Python yet, so I can not compare Ruby to that language.

The first couple of chapters are a good, concise reference to the core language, but the library reference is too stark-- most methods seem to have only one or two lines for description. Since this library reference is the bulk of the book, I don't think it's a good buy.

The library reference in the Thomas and Hunt book (Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide) is much nicer.

The book I have (2002 copyright) is based on Ruby 1.6.5. I have Ruby version 1.8.1-11. So the book is missing certain improvements to this elegant object oriented language. But that didn't seem to be a problem for me when using the book while learning the language.

I keep this book by my side when programming Ruby because, like most O'Reilly Cookbooks, the answers to the basics are a quick flip of the pages away. I also use The Ruby Way which is also good in a text book kind of way -- it offers examples.

All the basic functions and Classes are documented in this Cookbook. Its as if the originator of the language, the author Yukihiro Matsumoto, squeezed all the fluff out of the documentation and only served up the critical calling conventions for all important statements, functions and Classes.

For updates on the functions you can also use online resources or the Help file that comes with the program itself.

This review was written in February of 2004 and version 2.0 of Ruby is said to be a complete re-write. But that release will not be out for another year or so. I would then guess that this book would be valid through 2005.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

I've lost track of the number of times in the first two chapters where I either read a sentence that had no clear meaning, or where I saw an example that was just plain incorrect.

Page 12: "A symbol is an object corresponding to an identifier or variable." Uh, what? That's the complete explanation for this language construct.

Page 64: "arr.slice(n, len) Deletes the partial string specified and returns it." Followed by an example obviously copied from String::slice on page 54, which has the exact same example code except using 's' instead of 'a'. But page 64 is supposed to be describing arrays, not strings, so the description and example are just plain wrong.

It goes on and on. I had high hopes for this book given my past experience with O'Reilly Nutshell books, but this book is just not ready to go to print yet, and obviously has been very poorly proofread. Sadly it's been printed and it's out there in the world, so your best bet is to just avoid it until O'Reilly publishes a 2nd edition that fixes all of these mistakes.

There isn't much in-depth knowledge I can impart based on this book. It fulfills its demanded function as "A Desktop Quick Reference". It provides a quick reference to the core language features and APIs in a succinct way. On the fly, this book is a great reference. If you are going to be carrying around a reference for Ruby, this should be it. Its small size does not deter it from being full of succinct information. Do not buy this if you are looking for a tutorial-style introduction to Ruby. (In that case, see Programming Ruby by Dave Thomas). If you are looking for a quick reference to this fun programming language, however, this book is a great choice!

This book is very much a brief reference for Ruby -- it is consistent with the general philosophy of the nutshell series. Don't expect to learn ruby from this book even if you are already an experienced programmer. It is strictly a reference for those who need a quick reminder of the syntax.

Coverage of semantics is very limited and examples are few and far between.

Forgotten the name of the libarary that does directory listings? Need to know the method of the IMAP libarary? This is the book for that. Full documentation, look elsewhere, but as a handy guide to keep on your desk. Not a beginners learn to code Ruby book, but a beginners and intermediates quick look up the method book. Learning Ruby? Get this _AND_ a beginner tutorial book. It will speed up your learning curve.