Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (like in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, and extensible.
If you want a language for easy object-oriented programming, or you don't like the Perl ugliness, or you do like the concept of LISP, but don't like too many parentheses, Ruby might be your language of choice.
Ruby's features are as follows:
Ruby is an interpreted language, so you don't have to recompile programs written in Ruby to execute them.
Variables in Ruby can contain data of any type. You don't have to worry about variable typing. Consequently, it has a weaker compile time check.
You can use variables in your Ruby programs without any declarations. Variable names denote their scope - global, class, instance, or local.
Ruby has a simple syntax influenced slightly from Eiffel.
Ruby has automatic memory management. Objects no longer referenced from anywhere are automatically collected by the garbage collector built into the interpreter.
Ruby is a purely object-oriented language, and was so since its creation. Even such basic data as integers are seen as objects.
Being an object-oriented language, Ruby naturally has basic features like classes, inheritance, and methods.
Ruby has the ability to define methods for certain objects. For example, you can define a press-button action for certain widget by defining a singleton method for the button. Or, you can make up your own prototype based object system using singleton methods, if you want to.
Ruby intentionally does not have the multiple inheritance as it is a source of confusion. Instead, Ruby has the ability to share implementations across the inheritance tree. This is often called a
Ruby has iterators for loop abstraction.
In Ruby, you can objectify the procedure.
Ruby has a bunch of text processing features like in Perl.
Ruby supports multilingualized programming. Easy to process texts written in many different natural languages and encoded in many different character encodings, without dependence on Unicode.
With built-in bignums, you can for example calculate factorial(400).
Class is also an instance of the Class class. Definition of classes and methods is an expression just as 1+1 is. So your programs can even write and modify programs. Thus you can write your application in your own programming language on top of Ruby.
As in Java(tm).
Ruby can use most
system calls, often used in system programming.
On most
systems, you can load object files into the Ruby interpreter on-the-fly.
In addition to the
and
that are bundled with Ruby, a vast amount of third-party libraries
are available via the package management system called
namely the
command. Visit RubyGems.org
to find the gems you need, and explore GitHub
to see how they are being developed and used.
The Ruby interpreter accepts the following command-line options (switches). They are quite similar to those of
Prints the copyright notice, and quits immediately without running any script.
Prints the version of the Ruby interpreter, and quits immediately without running any script.
(The digit
Specifies the input record separator
as an octal number. If no digit is given, the null character is taken as the separator. Other switches may follow the digits.
turns Ruby into paragraph mode.
makes Ruby read whole file at once as a single string since there is no legal character with that value.
Causes Ruby to switch to the directory.
Specifies the default value(s) for external encodings and internal encoding. Values should be separated with colon (:).
You can omit the one for internal encodings, then the value
Specify the default external or internal character encoding
Specifies input field separator
Used to tell Ruby where to load the library scripts. Directory path will be added to the load-path variable
Specifies KANJI (Japanese) encoding. The default value for script encodings
can be one of
EUC-JP
Windows-31J (CP932)
UTF-8
ASCII-8BIT (BINARY)
Makes Ruby use the
environment variable to search for script, unless its name begins with a slash. This is used to emulate
on machines that don't support it, in the following manner:
#! /usr/local/bin/ruby # This line makes the next one a comment in Ruby \ exec /usr/local/bin/ruby -S $0 $*
On some systems
does not always contain the full pathname, so you need the
switch to tell Ruby to search for the script if necessary (to handle embedded spaces and such). A better construct than
would be
but it does not work if the script is being interpreted by
Turns on taint checks at the specified level (default 1).
Sets the default value for internal encodings
Turns on verbose mode at the specified level without printing the version message at the beginning. The level can be;
Verbose mode is "silence". It sets the
to nil.
Verbose mode is "medium". It sets the
to false.
Verbose mode is "verbose". It sets the
to true.
2 is same as
Turns on auto-split mode when used with
or
In auto-split mode, Ruby executes
at beginning of each loop.
Causes Ruby to check the syntax of the script and exit without executing. If there are no syntax errors, Ruby will print
to the standard output.
Turns on debug mode.
will be set to true.
Specifies script from command-line while telling Ruby not to search the rest of the arguments for a script file name.
Prints a summary of the options.
Specifies in-place-edit mode. The extension, if specified, is added to old file name to make a backup copy. For example:
% echo matz > /tmp/junk % cat /tmp/junk matz % ruby -p -i.bak -e '$_.upcase!' /tmp/junk % cat /tmp/junk MATZ % cat /tmp/junk.bak matz
(The lowercase letter
Enables automatic line-ending processing, which means to firstly set
to the value of
and secondly chops every line read using
Causes Ruby to assume the following loop around your script, which makes it iterate over file name arguments somewhat like
or
while gets ... end
Acts mostly same as -n switch, but print the value of variable
at the each end of the loop. For example:
% echo matz | ruby -p -e '$_.tr! "a-z", "A-Z"' MATZ
Causes Ruby to load the library using require. It is useful when using
or
Enables some switch parsing for switches after script name but before any file name arguments (or before a
Any switches found there are removed from
and set the corresponding variable in the script. For example:
#! /usr/local/bin/ruby -s # prints "true" if invoked with `-xyz' switch. print "true\n" if $xyz
Enables verbose mode. Ruby will print its version at the beginning and set the variable
to true. Some methods print extra messages if this variable is true. If this switch is given, and no other switches are present, Ruby quits after printing its version.
Enables verbose mode without printing version message at the beginning. It sets the
variable to true.
Tells Ruby that the script is embedded in a message. Leading garbage will be discarded until the first line that starts with
and contains the string,
Any meaningful switches on that line will be applied. The end of the script must be specified with either
or the reserved word
If the directory name is specified, Ruby will switch to that directory before executing script.
DO NOT USE.
Turns on compiler debug mode. Ruby will print a bunch of internal state messages during compilation. Only specify this switch you are going to debug the Ruby interpreter.
Disables (or enables) the specified
Disables (or enables) RubyGems libraries. By default, Ruby will load the latest version of each installed gem. The
constant is true if RubyGems is enabled, false if otherwise.
Ignores (or considers) the
environment variable. By default, Ruby considers the variable.
Disables (or enables) all features.
Dump some information.
Prints the specified target.
can be one of;
version description same as
brief usage message same as
Show long help message same as
check of syntax same as
compiler debug mode, same as
Only specify this switch if you are going to debug the Ruby interpreter.
AST nodes tree
Only specify this switch if you are going to debug the Ruby interpreter.
disassembled instructions
Only specify this switch if you are going to debug the Ruby interpreter.
Enables verbose mode without printing version message at the beginning. It sets the
variable to true. If this switch is given, and no script arguments (script file or
options) are present, Ruby quits immediately.
A colon-separated list of directories that are added to Ruby's library load path
before the standard load path is searched.
e.g.:
Additional Ruby options.
e.g.
Note that RUBYOPT can contain only
and
A colon-separated list of directories that Ruby searches for Ruby programs when the
flag is specified. This variable precedes the
environment variable.
The path to the system shell command. This environment variable is enabled for only mswin32, mingw32, and OS/2 platforms. If this variable is not defined, Ruby refers to
Ruby refers to the
environment variable on calling Kernel#system.
And Ruby depends on some RubyGems related environment variables unless RubyGems is disabled. See the help of
as below.
% gem help
The Ruby garbage collector (GC) tracks objects in fixed-sized slots, but each object may have auxiliary memory allocations handled by the malloc family of C standard library calls (
and
In this documentatation, the "heap" refers to the Ruby object heap of fixed-sized slots, while "malloc" refers to auxiliary allocations commonly referred to as the "process heap". Thus there are at least two possible ways to trigger GC:
Reaching the object limit.
Reaching the malloc limit.
In Ruby 2.1, the generational GC was introduced and the limits are divided into young and old generations, providing two additional ways to trigger a GC:
Reaching the old object limit.
Reaching the old malloc limit.
There are currently 4 possible areas where the GC may be tuned by the following 11 environment variables:
Initial allocation slots. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 10000.
Prepare at least this amount of slots after GC. Allocate this number slots if there are not enough slots. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 4096
Increase allocation rate of heap slots by this factor. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 1.8, minimum: 1.0 (no growth)
Allocation rate is limited to this number of slots, preventing excessive allocation due to RUBY_GC_HEAP_GROWTH_FACTOR. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 0 (no limit)
Perform a full GC when the number of old objects is more than R * N, where R is this factor and N is the number of old objects after the last full GC. Introduced in Ruby 2.1.1, default: 2.0
The initial limit of young generation allocation from the malloc-family. GC will start when this limit is reached. Default: 16MB
The maximum limit of young generation allocation from malloc before GC starts. Prevents excessive malloc growth due to RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 32MB.
Increases the limit of young generation malloc calls, reducing GC frequency but increasing malloc growth until RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT_MAX is reached. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 1.4, minimum: 1.0 (no growth)
The initial limit of old generation allocation from malloc, a full GC will start when this limit is reached. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 16MB
The maximum limit of old generation allocation from malloc before a full GC starts. Prevents excessive malloc growth due to RUBY_GC_OLDMALLOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 128MB
Increases the limit of old generation malloc allocation, reducing full GC frequency but increasing malloc growth until RUBY_GC_OLDMALLOC_LIMIT_MAX is reached. Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 1.2, minimum: 1.0 (no growth)
Stack size environment variables are implementation-dependent and subject to change with different versions of Ruby. The VM stack is used for pure-Ruby code and managed by the virtual machine. Machine stack is used by the operating system and its usage is dependent on C extensions as well as C compiler options. Using lower values for these may allow applications to keep more Fibers or Threads running; but increases the chance of SystemStackError exceptions and segmentation faults (SIGSEGV). These environment variables are available since Ruby 2.0.0. All values are specified in bytes.
VM stack size used at thread creation. default: 131072 (32-bit CPU) or 262144 (64-bit)
Machine stack size used at thread creation. default: 524288 or 1048575
VM stack size used at fiber creation. default: 65536 or 131072
Machine stack size used at fiber creation. default: 262144 or 524288
The official web site.
Comprehensive catalog of Ruby libraries.
Security vulnerabilities should be reported via an email to
Reported problems will be published after being fixed.
Other bugs and feature requests can be reported via the Ruby Issue Tracking System
Do not report security vulnerabilities via this system because it publishes the vulnerabilities immediately.
Ruby is designed and implemented by
See
for contributors to Ruby.