You dont have to know everything about a car to drive one and you dont needto know everything about Ruby to start programming with it. Written for bothexperienc... » 

You dont have to know everything about a car to drive one and you dont needto know everything about Ruby to start programming with it. Written for bothexperienced and new programmers alike Learning Ruby is a justgetinanddrivebook a handson tutorial that offers lots of Ruby programs and lets you knowhow and why they work just enough to get you rolling down the road. Interestin Ruby stems from the popularity of Rails the web development frameworkthats attracting new devotees and refugees from Java and PHP. But there areplenty of other uses for this versatile language. The best way to learn is tojust try the code Youll find examples on nearly every page of this book thatyou can imitate and hack. Briefly this book Outlines many of the mostimportant features of Ruby Demonstrates how to use conditionals and how tomanipulate strings in Ruby. Includes a section on regular expressions Describes how to use operators basic math functions from the Math modulerational numbers etc. Talks you through Ruby arrays and demonstrates hashesin detail Explains how to process files with Ruby Discusses Ruby classesand modules mixins in detail including a brief introduction to objectoriented programming OOP Introduces processing XML the Tk toolkitRubyGems reflection RDoc embedded Ruby metaprogramming exception handlingand other topics Acquaints you with some of the essentials of Rails andincludes a short Rails tutorial. Each chapter concludes with a set of reviewquestions and appendices provide you with a glossary of terms related to Rubyprogramming plus reference material from the book in one convenient location.If you want to take Ruby out for a drive Learning Ruby holds the keys. «