Chapter 5. Math
In other programming languages, numbers are primitives, or basic building blocks, that are used by other objects to create logic. In Ruby, everything (almost) is an object, even numbers. For example, here are some numbers that are considered primitives by other languages. What classes do they come from?
2.class # => Fixnum 2.0.class # => Float 2_000_000_000.class # => Bignum
There’s the proof in living code: Ruby does turn almost everything into an object. (The underscores in the last number, by the way, are just there for readability; the Ruby interpreter ignores them.)
Ruby has a number of classes and modules related to numbers. Here are the more important ones:
Numeric
The base class for numbers
Integer
The basic integer class, and the basis for the
Fixnum
classFloat
The class for real or floating-point numbers, based on the computer’s native capacity to represent double-precision
Fixnum
The main integer class, based on what the computer can hold in a native machine word, such as 32 bits or 64 bits, minus 1
Bignum
The class of integers outside the range of the basic, native machine word
Math
A module that holds math functions (as methods)
Precision
A module for approximating the precision of real numbers
Rational
A class that represents fractional numbers
Complex
A class that represents complex numbers, which extend real numbers with imaginary numbers (x + iy)
Matrix
A class for creating mathematical matrixes
A hierarchy of the math classes, along with modules, is shown in Figure 5-1 ...
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