Crypto-Tech

Basic Ruby Tutorials: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 |

Ruby has clear language structure and functionality. Developed in 1990 by Yukihiro Matsumoto. If you are old or young or in the middle, this programming language is a GREAT place to start.

A Simple Ruby Program in 4 Steps

Ruby comes pre-installed on most Macs. This tutorial is mostly designed for OS. For this first tutorial, your Ruby program will be in a textEdit file.

1.) The Command Line Window

Start a command line (terminal) window. This is where you set up your ruby directory and where you will see the results of your first Ruby program.

• Open a command line window in : Mac OS X
  [Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal]
• Open a command line window in : Windows

Create a learnRuby directory:

Enter the text below to create a new directory for your files. Enter the command, such as ruby -v and then press the Enter/Return key.

• At the command line enter: mkdir learnRuby [enter]
• At the command line enter: cd learnRuby [enter]
• At the command line enter: ls [enter]
• At the command line enter: ruby -v [enter]

Command prompts: mkdir = make directory, cd = change directory, ls = list contents of directory, ruby -v = version of ruby pre-installed on mac?

2.) Create a Simple Ruby test1.rb File

• Open textEdit on a Mac from the Applications folder or in Launchpad. In Windows, open NotePad. (Be sure to save as a text file.)
• On the textEdit menu bar, select: new -> format -> make plain text.
• Save your textEdit file in your new learnRuby directory with the file name test1.rb The .rb file extension tells the code interpreter that this is a Ruby file.

3.) Enter Code In the test1.rb File

puts tells Ruby to display that item to the command window.
In your test1.rb file, enter the lines of code below. Save the file.

• puts Hello You
• puts 10 + 2
• favFood = "coconut"
• puts favFood

4.) Run the test1.rb File

You'll run the test1.rb file in the command window:

• At the command line enter: cd learnRuby [enter]
• At the command line enter: ruby test1.rb [enter]