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!SLIDE subsection

Introduction to Ruby for Programmers

This section is intended as a brief, lightweight overview of the Ruby language; following sections will cover all these topics in much more detail. Students are encouraged to ask questions, but instructors are encouraged to answer, "We'll cover that later."

Ruby vs. Rails

Ruby is a Language

Rails is a Framework

Rails is written in Ruby

Ruby Philosophy

Matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto), Ruby creator, says:

"I believe people want to express themselves when they program. They don't want to fight with the language."

"Programming languages must feel natural to programmers."

"I tried to make people enjoy programming and concentrate on the fun and creative part of programming when they use Ruby."

"For me the purpose of life is partly to have joy. Programmers often feel joy when they can concentrate on the creative side of programming, So Ruby is designed to make programmers happy."

"I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python."

Ruby Philosophy: Humane Interface

  • Ruby has a humane interface
    • many ways to do things
  • Ruby favors readability and variety over concision and perfection
  • sometimes makes code hard to understand (but usually makes it easier)
  • contrast to minimal interface
    • one (or a few) "right" ways to do things
    • Python has a minimal philosophy

Many Rubies

  • Ruby 1.0 released in 1996
    • Fully Open Source

many rubies

Versions common today

  • MRI 1.8.7
  • MRI 1.9.2 or 1.9.3
  • JRuby

Ruby Language Overview

  • Interpreted
  • Dynamically typed
  • Object oriented
  • Blocks / lambdas / closures
  • Perl-like regular expressions
  • Closely tied to shell & OS

IRB: Interactive RuBy

@@@ ruby
$ irb
>> 4
=> 4
>> 4+4
=> 8

Please fire up irb on your computer and try this out right now!

Everything's an Object

@@@ ruby
>> 2.class
=> Fixnum

>> 2.to_s
=> "2"

>> 2.to_s.class
=> String

Everything Has a Value

@@@ ruby
>> 2 + 2
=> 4

>> (2+2).zero?
=> false

>> if true then "yes" end
=> "yes"

>> if false then "yes" end
=> nil

Output vs Value

>> puts "foo"
foo
=> nil

The output is foo\n but the value is nil.

Printing

  • print prints its arg
  • puts prints its arg plus a newline
  • p inspects and prints its arg plus a newline

Advanced Printing

  • pp pretty-prints its arg plus a newline
    • require "pp"
  • d is even prettier than pp
    • provided by the wrong gem
    • require "wrong"; include Wrong::D
    • if x is 10, d { x } prints x is 10

Blocks are like mini-functions

  • Blocks can also take parameters or return a value

  • e.g. the map iterator translates each item in an array into a new array

      @@@ ruby
  >> ["hello", "world"].map {|string| string.upcase}
  => ["HELLO", "WORLD"]

  • {|string| string.upcase} defines a block

Method Chaining

  • Chaining is a really cool and powerful Ruby idiom
  • It depends on these three features:
    • Every expression has a value
    • Every value is an object
    • Iterators are loops inside methods
  • So you can call a method on anything
    • including the result of an iterator

Method Chaining Example

s = "my dog has fleas"

Without chaining:

words = s.split
words = words.map{|word| word.capitalize}
s = words.join(" ")

With chaining:

s = "my dog has fleas"
s.split.map{|word| word.capitalize}.join(" ")

Optional Punctuation

  • semicolons, parens, and return are optional

  • These are equivalent:

      @@@ ruby
  def inc(x)
    return x + 1;
  end

  def inc x
    x + 1
  end

  def inc(x); x + 1; end

  def inc(x) x + 1; end

Poetry vs Prose

Other languages are prose:

@@@ Java
public String titleize(s) {
  String words = s.split(" ");
  String titleized = "";
  for(int i =0; i < words.length ; i++) {
    char capLetter = Character.toUpperCase(words[i].charAt(0));
    String capWord =  capLetter + words[i].substring(1, words[i].length());
    titleized += capWord + " ";
  }
  return titleized.trim();
}

Ruby is poetry:

@@@ Ruby
def titleize s
  s.split.map{|word| word.capitalize}.join(" ")
end

Cf. declarative vs. algorithmic

Line Break Gotcha

@@@ ruby
x = 1 + 2
x #=> 3

x = 1
  + 2
x #=> 1

Solution: always put operators on top line

x = 1 +
    2
x #=> 3

Use parens when you need them

@@@ ruby
>> "Hello".gsub "H", "h"
=> "hello"

>> "Hello".gsub "H", "h".reverse
=> "hello"

>> "Hello".gsub("H", "h").reverse
=> "olleh"

Ruby has hash comments, like perl

@@@ ruby
# is a comment
2 + 2 # is a comment

Ruby has a syntax for multiline comments too, but it's silly and nobody uses it.

Variables are declared implicitly

@@@ ruby
first_name = "Santa"
last_name = "Claus"
full_name = first_name + last_name
#=> "SantaClaus"

Built-in Types

  • Numbers
    • 42 (Fixnum)
    • 3.14159 (Float)
  • Booleans
    • true
    • false
  • Strings
    • "apple"
    • 'banana'
  • Symbols
    • :apple

Built-in Types (cont.)

  • Regular Expressions
    • /fo*/i
  • Arrays
    • ["apple", "banana"]
  • Ranges
    • (1..10)
  • Hashes
    • {:apple => 'red', :banana => 'yellow'}
    • {apple: 'red', banana: 'yellow'}

String interpolation

@@@ ruby
"boyz #{1 + 1} men"
=> "boyz 2 men"
  • Any Ruby code can go inside the braces
  • It gets evaluated and stuck inside the string

equal, double-equal, and threequal

  • x = 1 means "put the value 1 in the variable x"
  • x == 2 means "true if x is 2, otherwise false"
  • x === 3 means the same as == but sometimes more
    • threequal is rarely used

Ruby syntax cheatsheet

cheatsheet

(The Well-Grounded Rubyist, p. 5, section 1.1.2)

Functions

@@@ ruby
def add a, b
  a + b
end

add 2, 2
#=> 4
  • Note: no 'return' required
  • def add(a, b) is also legal

Interlude

Are you sick of hearing me speak?

If so, do a lab: 01_temperature is right up your alley.

Classes and methods

@@@ ruby
class Calculator
  def add(a,b)
    a + b
  end
end

calc = Calculator.new
calc.add(2, 2)
#=> 4
  • a function inside a class is called a method

Classes

  • A class defines a group of behaviors (methods)
  • Every object has a class, Object if nothing else

Messages and Methods

  • an object is referenced by a variable or a literal
  • the dot operator (.) sends a message to an object
  • an object receives a message and invokes a method
  • with no dot, the default object (self) is the receiver

bang and question mark methods

  • method names can end with ! or ?
    • ? means "boolean"
    • ! means "watch out!"

Ruby Naming Conventions

methods and variables are in snake_case

classes and modules are in CamelCase

constants are in ALL_CAPS

Standard is better than better.

-- Anon.

Ruby Identifiers

  • local_variable - start with letter or underscore, contain letters, numbers, underscored
  • @instance_variable - start with @
  • @@class_variable - start with @@
  • $global_variable - start with $
  • Constant or CONSTANT - must start with uppercase letter
  • ClassName - capitalized camel case
  • method_name? - like a local variable, but can end with ? or ! or =
  • keywords - about 40 reserved words (def) and weirdos (__FILE__)
  • literals - "hi" for strings, [1,2] for arrays, {:a=>1, :b=>2} for hashes, etc.

Variable Scopes

@@@ ruby
var   # local variable (or method call)
@var  # instance variable
@@var # class variable
$var  # global variable
VAR   # constant

load and require

  • load inserts a file's contents into the current file
  • require makes a feature available to the current file
    • skips already-loaded files
    • omits the trailing .rb
    • can also be used for extensions written in C (.so, .dll, etc.)

Credits