Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is an object oriented interpreted programming language with clean syntax. It has its roots in Perl, Smalltalk, Python and Lisp, with Perl being the most important root.

Ruby language features:

obvious syntax

basic object oriented features

special oriented oriented features (mix-ins, singleton methods, renaming, etc)

operator overloading

exception handling

iterators and closures

Perl regular expression support at syntax level

garbage collection

dynamic loading (depending on the architecture)

high portability (runs on Unices, Windows, DOS, OSX, OS/2, Amiga, and many more)

Ruby is purely object-oriented: every bit of data is an object, even basic types. Every function is a method. This is similar to Smalltalk but unlike Java and Python.

The language was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto on February 24, 1993. The current stable version is 1.6.5 (25-09-2001). Note that the name is not an acronym---it is actually a pun on Perl.

See http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ for more information and to download the package.

See http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml for mailing list archives.

See http://www.rubycentral.com/faq/rubyfaqall.html for a FAQ document.

See http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ for an excellent free on-line book about Ruby.

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