The well-grounded Rubyist [2nd ed.]

brief contents......Page 3
contents......Page 5
preface......Page 15
preface......Page 16
about this book......Page 18
--- Ruby Foundations......Page 23
Bootstrapping your Ruby literacy......Page 25
Basic Ruby language literacy......Page 26
Anatomy of the Ruby installation......Page 37
Ruby extensions and programming libraries......Page 40
Out-of-the-box Ruby tools and applications......Page 44
Summary......Page 55
Objects, methods & local variables......Page 56
Talking to objects......Page 57
Crafting an object: The behavior of a ticket......Page 62
The innate behaviors of an object......Page 66
A close look at method arguments......Page 70
Local variables and variable assignment......Page 76
Summary......Page 82
Organizing objects with classes......Page 84
Classes and instances......Page 85
Instance variables and object state......Page 89
Setter methods......Page 92
Attributes and the attr_* method family......Page 96
Inheritance and the Ruby class hierarchy......Page 99
Classes as objects and message receivers......Page 103
Constants up close......Page 108
Nature vs. nurture in Ruby objects......Page 111
Summary......Page 113
Modules and program organization......Page 114
Basics of module creation and use......Page 115
Modules, classes, and method lookup......Page 121
The method_missing method......Page 131
Class/module design and naming......Page 136
Summary......Page 139
Default Object (self), scope & visibility......Page 141
Understanding self, the current/default object......Page 142
Determining scope......Page 151
Deploying method-access rules......Page 166
Writing and using top-level methods......Page 171
Summary......Page 173
Control-flow techniques......Page 174
Conditional code execution......Page 175
Repeating actions with loops......Page 186
Iterators and code blocks......Page 190
Error handling and exceptions......Page 201
Summary......Page 209
--- Built-in Classes & Modules......Page 211
Built-in essentials......Page 213
Ruby’s literal constructors......Page 214
Recurrent syntactic sugar......Page 215
Bang (!) methods and “danger”......Page 219
Built-in and custom to_* (conversion) methods......Page 222
Boolean states, Boolean objects, and nil......Page 229
Comparing two objects......Page 234
Inspecting object capabilities......Page 237
Summary......Page 239
Strings, symbols & other scalar objects......Page 241
Working with strings......Page 242
Symbols and their uses......Page 259
Numerical objects......Page 265
Times and dates......Page 268
Summary......Page 274
Collection & container objects......Page 276
Arrays and hashes in comparison......Page 277
Collection handling with arrays......Page 278
Hashes......Page 289
Ranges......Page 299
Sets......Page 303
Summary......Page 307
Collections - Enumerable & Enumerator......Page 308
Gaining enumerability through each......Page 309
Enumerable Boolean queries......Page 311
Enumerable searching and selecting......Page 313
Element-wise enumerable operations......Page 319
Relatives of each......Page 322
The map method......Page 326
Strings as quasi-enumerables......Page 328
Sorting enumerables......Page 330
Enumerators and the next dimension of enumerability......Page 333
Enumerator semantics and uses......Page 338
Enumerator method chaining......Page 344
Lazy enumerators......Page 348
Summary......Page 350
Regular expressions & regexp-based string operations......Page 352
Writing regular expressions......Page 353
Building a pattern in a regular expression......Page 355
Matching, substring captures, and MatchData......Page 358
Fine-tuning regular expressions with quantifiers,  anchors, and modifiers......Page 364
Converting strings and regular expressions  to each other......Page 372
Common methods that use regular expressions......Page 375
Summary......Page 381
File & IO operations......Page 382
How Ruby’s I/O system is put together......Page 383
Basic file operations......Page 386
Querying IO and File objects......Page 395
Directory manipulation with the Dir class......Page 397
File tools from the standard library......Page 401
Summary......Page 406
--- Ruby Dynamics......Page 408
Object individuation......Page 410
Where the singleton methods are: The singleton class......Page 411
Modifying Ruby’s core classes and modules......Page 421
BasicObject as ancestor and class......Page 433
Summary......Page 437
Callable & runnable objects......Page 439
Basic anonymous functions: The Proc class......Page 440
Creating functions with lambda and ->......Page 449
Methods as objects......Page 451
The eval family of methods......Page 454
Parallel execution with threads......Page 459
Issuing system commands from inside Ruby programs......Page 470
Summary......Page 475
Callbacks, hooks & runtime introspection......Page 477
Callbacks and hooks......Page 478
Interpreting object capability queries......Page 488
Introspection of variables and constants......Page 495
Tracing execution......Page 497
Callbacks and method inspection in practice......Page 501
Summary......Page 506
index......Page 508