Ruby by Example

Chapter Recap

What was new in this chapter?

• Dates

• Constants versus magic numbers

• Expressions with the || operator

• ENV[‘HOME’]

• External file access, both reading and writing, using File.new

• Splitting Strings into Arrays

• Printing with puts

• Generating (pseudo-)random numbers

• Running Ruby programs at the command line

• Defining and instantiating new Classes

• Instance variables: @i_am_an_instance_variable

• Ruby method naming conventions: predicate?, destructive!

• Introduction to RDoc

• Expression interpolation within Strings: “#{interpolate_me}”

• Ternary operator: (expression ? if_true : if_false)

• Access control

• Open classes

• Using ARGV

• Using the each method with blocks

• The system method

That’s a great deal of non-trivial information. If you’re relatively new to programming, have ...