Carlson Lucas, Richardson Leonard. Ruby CookBook

O’Reilly Media, 2006. - 910 pages. 1 edition. ISBN-13: 978-0596523695This cookbook is aimed at people who know at least a little bit of Ruby, or who know a fair amount about programming in general. This isn’t a Rubytutorial (see the Resources section below for some real tutorials), but if you’re already familiar with a few other programming languages, you should be able to pick up Ruby by reading through the first 10 chapters of this book and typing in the code listings as you go. We’ve included recipes suitable for all skill levels, from those who are just starting out with Ruby, to experts who need an occasional reference. We focus mainly on
generic programming techniques, but we also cover specific application frameworks (like Ruby on Rails and GUI libraries) and best practices (like unit testing).
Even if you just plan to use this book as a reference, we recommend that you skim through it once to get a picture of the problems we solve. This is a big book but it doesn’t solve every problem. If you pick it up and you can’t find a solution to your problem, or one that nudges you in the right direction, then you’ve lost time. If you skim through this book once beforehand, you’ll get a fair idea of the problems we cover in this book, and you’ll get a better hit rate. You’ll know when this book can help you; and when you should consult other books, do a web search, ask a
friend, or get help some other way.