Ruby (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:26, 11 November 2002

Revision as of 23:39, 25 November 2002

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* Basic [[object-oriented]] features

* Special object-oriented features:

** [[mixins]]

** [[singleton methods]]

** [[renaming]]

** [[object-specific classes]]

** [[etc.]]

* [[Operator overloading]]

* [[Exception handling]]

* [[Iterator|Iterators]] and [[Closure (programming)|Closures]]

* [[Pearl|Perl]] [[regular expression]] support at [[syntax]] level

* [[computer memory garbage collection|Garbage collection]]

* [[Dynamic loading]] (depending on the architecture)

* High portability (runs on [[Unix]], [[Microsoft Windows]], [[DOS]], OSX, OS/2, [[Amiga]], and many more)

* Distributed under an [[open source]] licenselicence ([[GNU General Public Licence|GPL]] or [[Artistic Licence|Artistic]]).

Ruby is purely object-oriented: every bit of data is an object, even basic types. Every function is a method. This is similar to Smalltalk but unlike [[Java programming language|Java]] and Python. With a few exceptions, every name (variable) in a Ruby program hold a reference to an object, not the object itself.