Ruby is perhaps best known as the engine powering the hugely popular Ruby on Rails web framework. However, it is an extremely powerful and versatile programming language in its own right. It focuses on simplicity and offers a fully object-oriented environment.

Beginning Ruby is a thoroughly contemporary guide for every type of reader wanting to learn Ruby, from novice programmers to web developers to Ruby newcomers. It starts by explaining the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters builds toward creating a genuine Ruby application.

The book then explains key Ruby principles, such as classes and objects; projects, modules, and libraries; and other aspects of Ruby such as database access. In addition, Ruby on Rails is covered in depth, and the book’s appendixes provide essential reference information as well as a primer for experienced programmers.

Do you want to push Ruby to its limits? The Ruby Cookbook is the most comprehensive problem-solving guide to today’s hottest programming language. It gives you hundreds of solutions to real-world problems, with clear explanations and thousands of lines of code you can use in your own projects.

From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer. Beginners and advanced Rubyists alike will learn how to program with:

• Strings and numbers
• Arrays and hashes
• Classes, modules, and namespaces
• Reflection and metaprogramming
• XML and HTML processing
• Ruby on Rails (including Ajax integration)
• Databases
• Graphics
• Internet services like email, SSH, and BitTorrent
• Web services
• Multitasking
• Graphical and terminal interfaces

If you need to write a web application, this book shows you how to get started with Rails. If you’re a system administrator who needs to rename thousands of files, you’ll see how to use Ruby for this and other everyday tasks. You’ll learn how to read and write Excel spreadsheets, classify text with Bayesian filters, and create PDF files. We’ve even included a few silly tricks that were too cool to leave out, like how to blink the lights on your keyboard.

The Ruby Cookbook is the most useful book yet written about Ruby. When you need to solve a problem, don’t reinvent the wheel: look it up in the Cookbook.

Ruby is an increasingly popular, fully object-oriented dynamic programming language, hailed by many practitioners as the finest and most useful language available today. When Ruby first burst onto the scene in the Western world, the Pragmatic Programmers were there with the definitive reference manual, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide.

Now in its second edition, author Dave Thomas has expanded the famous Pickaxe book with over 200 pages of new content, covering all the improved language features of Ruby 1.8 and standard library modules. The Pickaxe contains four major sections:

• An acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby.
• The definitive reference to the language.
• Complete documentation on all built-in classes, modules, and methods
• Complete descriptions of all 98 standard libraries.

If you enjoyed the First Edition, you’ll appreciate the expanded content, including enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby’s capabilities using C-language extensions. Programming for the World Wide Web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems, and other web services. There’s even a new chapter on unit testing.

This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. “Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I’m working with it this book is at my side”