<p style="margin:0px">Ruby is an agile object-oriented language, borrowing some of the best features from LISP, Smalltalk, Perl, CLU, and other languages. Its popularity has grown tremendously in the five years since the first edition of this book.</p><p style="margin:0px"></p><p style="margin:0px"><b><i><b>The Ruby Way</b> </i></b>takes a “how-to” approach to Ruby programming with the bulk of the material consisting of more than 400 examples arranged by topic. Each example answers the question “How do I do this in Ruby?” Working along with the author, you are presented with the task description and a discussion of the technical constraints. This is followed by a step-by-step presentation of one good solution. Along the way, the author provides detailed commentary and explanations to aid your understanding.</p><p style="margin:0px"></p><p style="margin:0px">Coverage includes</p><ul><li><div style="margin:0px">An overview of Ruby, explaining terminology and basic principles</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Operations on low-level data types (numbers, strings, regular expressions, dates)</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">The new regular expression engine (Oniguruma)</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Internationalization (I18N) and message catalogs in Ruby</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Operations on hashes, arrays, and other data structures such as stacks, trees, and graphs</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Working with general I/O, files, and persistent objects</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Database coverage including MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, DBI, and more</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Ruby-specific techniques in OOP and dynamic programming</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Graphical interfaces in Ruby (Tk, GTK&#43;, Fox, and Qt)</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Working with Ruby threads for lightweight multitasking</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Everyday scripting and system administration in Ruby</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Working with image files, PDFs, YAML, XML, RSS, and Atom</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Testing, debugging, profiling, and packaging Ruby code</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Low-level network programming and client-server interaction</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Web development tools including Rails, Nitro, Wee, IOWA, and more</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Working with distributed Ruby, Rinda, and Ring</div></li><li><div style="margin:0px">Ruby development tools such as IDEs, documentation tools, and more</div></li></ul><p style="margin:0px">The source code for the book can be downloaded from </p>