Includes index.

Includes references to web sites, blogs, forums and newsgroups, mailing lists, real-time chat rooms, tutorials and guides.

At a Glance; Contents; Foreword; About the Author; About the Technical Reviewer; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part 1: Foundations and Scaffolding; Chapter 1: Let's Get It Started: Installing Ruby; Installing Ruby; Windows; Mac OS X / macOS; Testing for a Preinstalled Version of Ruby; Installing Ruby on OS X; Installing Ruby from Source on Mac OS X; Linux; Checking If Ruby Is Installed on Linux; Installing Ruby with a Package Manager; Installing Ruby from Source Code; Other Platforms; Summary; Chapter 2: Programming == Joy: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ruby and Object Orientation. Baby Stepsirb: Interactive Ruby; Ruby Is "English for Computers"; Why Ruby Makes a Great Programming Language; Trails for the Mind; Turning Ideas into Ruby Code; How Ruby Understands Concepts with Objects and Classes; The Making of a Person; Basic Variables; From People to Pets; Structuring Your Pets Logically; Controlling Your Pets; Everything Is an Object; Kernel Methods; Passing Data to Methods; Using the Methods of the String Class; Using Ruby in a Non-Object-Oriented Style; Summary; Chapter 3: Ruby's Building Blocks: Data, Expressions, and Flow Control; Numbers and Expressions. Basic ExpressionsVariables; Comparison Operators and Expressions; Looping Through Numbers with Blocks and Iterators; Floating Point Numbers; Constants; Text and Strings; String Literals; String Expressions; Interpolation; String Methods; Regular Expressions and String Manipulation; Substitutions; Iteration with a Regular Expression; Matching; Arrays and Lists; Basic Arrays; Splitting Strings into Arrays; Array Iteration; Other Array Methods; Array Addition and Concatenation; Array Subtraction and Difference; Checking for an Empty Array; Checking an Array for a Certain Item. Accessing the First and Last Elements of the ArrayReversing the Order of the Array's Elements; Hashes; Basic Hash Methods; Iterating Through Hash Elements; Retrieving Keys; Deleting Hash Elements; Deleting Hash Elements Conditionally; Hashes Within Hashes; Flow Control; if and unless;?, the Ternary Operator; elsif and case; while and until; Code Blocks; Other Useful Building Blocks; Dates and Times; Large Numbers; Ranges; Symbols; Converting Objects to Other Classes; Summary; Chapter 4: Developing Your First Ruby Application; Working with Source Code Files; Creating a Test File. Visual Studio CodeAlternatives to Linux; A Simple Source Code File; Running Your Source Code; Windows; Mac OS X / macOS; Linux and Other UNIX-Based Systems; Our Application: A Text Analyzer; Required Basic Features; Building the Basic Application; Obtaining Some Dummy Text; Loading Text Files and Counting Lines; Counting Characters; Counting Words; Counting Sentences and Paragraphs; Calculating Averages; The Source Code So Far; Adding Extra Features; Percentage of "Useful" Words; Summarizing by Finding "Interesting" Sentences; Analyzing Files Other Than text.txt; The Completed Program.

Learn the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters create a fully functional Ruby application. You'll also gain a basic understanding of many ancillary technologies such as databases, XML, web frameworks, and networking - some of which are needed as part of a fully functioning Ruby application. Based on the bestselling first and second editions, Beginning Ruby, Third Edition is a leading guide to learn Ruby from the ground up. The new edition of this book provides the same excellent introduction to Ruby as the previous editions plus updates for the newest version of Ruby 2.3. This book can also be used as a textbook or companion to a textbook on beginning Ruby programming. The light and agile Ruby programming language remains a very popular open source scripting option for developers building today's web and even some enterprise applications. And, now, Ruby also has applications using the Raspberry Pi, popular among hobbyists and makers. Many former Java developers still use Ruby on Rails today, the most popular framework for building Ruby applications. What You'll Learn What are the fundamentals of Ruby and its object-oriented building blocks How to work with Ruby libraries, gems, and documentation How to work with files and databases How to write and deploy Ruby applications What are the various Ruby web frameworks and how to use them How to do network programming with Ruby and more Who This Book Is For This book is for beginning programmers, programmers new to Ruby, and web developers interested in learning and knowing the foundations of the Ruby programming language.