1RUBY(1)                Ruby Programmer's Reference Guide               RUBY(1)
2

NAME

4     ruby — Interpreted object-oriented scripting language
5

SYNOPSIS

7     ruby [--copyright] [--version] [-SUacdlnpswvy] [-0[octal]] [-C directory]
8          [-E external[:internal]] [-F[pattern]] [-I directory] [-K[c]]
9          [-T[level]] [-W[level]] [-e command] [-i[extension]] [-r library]
10          [-x[directory]] [--{enable|disable}-FEATURE] [--dump=target]
11          [--verbose] [--] [program_file] [argument ...]
12

DESCRIPTION

14     Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-ori‐
15     ented programming.  It has many features to process text files and to do
16     system management tasks (like in Perl).  It is simple, straight-forward,
17     and extensible.
18
19     If you want a language for easy object-oriented programming, or you don't
20     like the Perl ugliness, or you do like the concept of LISP, but don't
21     like too many parentheses, Ruby might be your language of choice.
22

FEATURES

24     Ruby's features are as follows:
25
26     Interpretive
27             Ruby is an interpreted language, so you don't have to recompile
28             programs written in Ruby to execute them.
29
30     Variables have no type (dynamic typing)
31             Variables in Ruby can contain data of any type.  You don't have
32             to worry about variable typing.  Consequently, it has a weaker
33             compile time check.
34
35     No declaration needed
36             You can use variables in your Ruby programs without any declara‐
37             tions.  Variable names denote their scope - global, class,
38             instance, or local.
39
40     Simple syntax
41             Ruby has a simple syntax influenced slightly from Eiffel.
42
43     No user-level memory management
44             Ruby has automatic memory management.  Objects no longer refer‐
45             enced from anywhere are automatically collected by the garbage
46             collector built into the interpreter.
47
48     Everything is an object
49             Ruby is a purely object-oriented language, and was so since its
50             creation.  Even such basic data as integers are seen as objects.
51
52     Class, inheritance, and methods
53             Being an object-oriented language, Ruby naturally has basic fea‐
54             tures like classes, inheritance, and methods.
55
56     Singleton methods
57             Ruby has the ability to define methods for certain objects.  For
58             example, you can define a press-button action for certain widget
59             by defining a singleton method for the button.  Or, you can make
60             up your own prototype based object system using singleton meth‐
61             ods, if you want to.
62
63     Mix-in by modules
64             Ruby intentionally does not have the multiple inheritance as it
65             is a source of confusion.  Instead, Ruby has the ability to share
66             implementations across the inheritance tree.  This is often
67             called a ‘Mix-in’.
68
69     Iterators
70             Ruby has iterators for loop abstraction.
71
72     Closures
73             In Ruby, you can objectify the procedure.
74
75     Text processing and regular expressions
76             Ruby has a bunch of text processing features like in Perl.
77
78     M17N, character set independent
79             Ruby supports multilingualized programming. Easy to process texts
80             written in many different natural languages and encoded in many
81             different character encodings, without dependence on Unicode.
82
83     Bignums
84             With built-in bignums, you can for example calculate facto‐
85             rial(400).
86
87     Reflection and domain specific languages
88             Class is also an instance of the Class class. Definition of
89             classes and methods is an expression just as 1+1 is. So your pro‐
90             grams can even write and modify programs.  Thus you can write
91             your application in your own programming language on top of Ruby.
92
93     Exception handling
94             As in Java(tm).
95
96     Direct access to the OS
97             Ruby can use most UNIX system calls, often used in system pro‐
98             gramming.
99
100     Dynamic loading
101             On most UNIX systems, you can load object files into the Ruby
102             interpreter on-the-fly.
103
104     Rich libraries
105             In addition to the “builtin libraries” and “standard libraries”
106             that are bundled with Ruby, a vast amount of third-party
107             libraries (“gems”) are available via the package management sys‐
108             tem called ‘RubyGems’, namely the gem(1) command.  Visit
109             RubyGems.org (https://rubygems.org/) to find the gems you need,
110             and explore GitHub (https://github.com/) to see how they are
111             being developed and used.
112

OPTIONS

114     The Ruby interpreter accepts the following command-line options
115     (switches).  They are quite similar to those of perl(1).
116
117     --copyright    Prints the copyright notice, and quits immediately without
118                    running any script.
119
120     --version      Prints the version of the Ruby interpreter, and quits
121                    immediately without running any script.
122
123     -0[octal]      (The digit “zero”.)  Specifies the input record separator
124                    ($/) as an octal number. If no digit is given, the null
125                    character is taken as the separator.  Other switches may
126                    follow the digits.  -00 turns Ruby into paragraph mode.
127                    -0777 makes Ruby read whole file at once as a single
128                    string since there is no legal character with that value.
129
130     -C directory
131     -X directory   Causes Ruby to switch to the directory.
132
133     -E external[:internal]
134     --encoding external[:internal]
135                    Specifies the default value(s) for external encodings and
136                    internal encoding. Values should be separated with colon
137                    (:).
138
139                    You can omit the one for internal encodings, then the
140                    value (Encoding.default_internal) will be nil.
141
142     --external-encoding=encoding
143     --internal-encoding=encoding
144                    Specify the default external or internal character encod‐
145                    ing
146
147     -F pattern     Specifies input field separator ($;).
148
149     -I directory   Used to tell Ruby where to load the library scripts.
150                    Directory path will be added to the load-path variable
151                    ($:).
152
153     -K kcode       Specifies KANJI (Japanese) encoding. The default value for
154                    script encodings (__ENCODING__) and external encodings
155                    (Encoding.default_external) will be the specified one.
156                    kcode can be one of
157
158                          e       EUC-JP
159
160                          s       Windows-31J (CP932)
161
162                          u       UTF-8
163
164                          n       ASCII-8BIT (BINARY)
165
166     -S             Makes Ruby use the PATH environment variable to search for
167                    script, unless its name begins with a slash.  This is used
168                    to emulate #! on machines that don't support it, in the
169                    following manner:
170
171                          #! /usr/local/bin/ruby
172                          # This line makes the next one a comment in Ruby \
173                            exec /usr/local/bin/ruby -S $0 $*
174
175                    On some systems $0 does not always contain the full path‐
176                    name, so you need the -S switch to tell Ruby to search for
177                    the script if necessary (to handle embedded spaces and
178                    such).  A better construct than $* would be ${1+"$@"}, but
179                    it does not work if the script is being interpreted by
180                    csh(1).
181
182     -T[level=1]    Turns on taint checks at the specified level (default 1).
183
184     -U             Sets the default value for internal encodings
185                    (Encoding.default_internal) to UTF-8.
186
187     -W[level=2]    Turns on verbose mode at the specified level without
188                    printing the version message at the beginning. The level
189                    can be;
190
191                          0       Verbose mode is "silence". It sets the
192                                  $VERBOSE to nil.
193
194                          1       Verbose mode is "medium". It sets the
195                                  $VERBOSE to false.
196
197                          2 (default) Verbose mode is "verbose". It sets the
198                                  $VERBOSE to true.  -W2 is same as -w
199
200     -a             Turns on auto-split mode when used with -n or -p.  In
201                    auto-split mode, Ruby executes
202                          $F = $_.split
203                    at beginning of each loop.
204
205     -c             Causes Ruby to check the syntax of the script and exit
206                    without executing. If there are no syntax errors, Ruby
207                    will print “Syntax OK” to the standard output.
208
209     -d
210     --debug        Turns on debug mode.  $DEBUG will be set to true.
211
212     -e command     Specifies script from command-line while telling Ruby not
213                    to search the rest of the arguments for a script file
214                    name.
215
216     -h
217     --help         Prints a summary of the options.
218
219     -i extension   Specifies in-place-edit mode.  The extension, if speci‐
220                    fied, is added to old file name to make a backup copy.
221                    For example:
222
223                          % echo matz > /tmp/junk
224                          % cat /tmp/junk
225                          matz
226                          % ruby -p -i.bak -e '$_.upcase!' /tmp/junk
227                          % cat /tmp/junk
228                          MATZ
229                          % cat /tmp/junk.bak
230                          matz
231
232     -l             (The lowercase letter “ell”.)  Enables automatic line-end‐
233                    ing processing, which means to firstly set $\ to the value
234                    of $/, and secondly chops every line read using chop!.
235
236     -n             Causes Ruby to assume the following loop around your
237                    script, which makes it iterate over file name arguments
238                    somewhat like sed -n or awk.
239
240                          while gets
241                            ...
242                          end
243
244     -p             Acts mostly same as -n switch, but print the value of
245                    variable $_ at the each end of the loop.  For example:
246
247                          % echo matz | ruby -p -e '$_.tr! "a-z", "A-Z"'
248                          MATZ
249
250     -r library     Causes Ruby to load the library using require.  It is use‐
251                    ful when using -n or -p.
252
253     -s             Enables some switch parsing for switches after script name
254                    but before any file name arguments (or before a --).  Any
255                    switches found there are removed from ARGV and set the
256                    corresponding variable in the script.  For example:
257
258                          #! /usr/local/bin/ruby -s
259                          # prints "true" if invoked with `-xyz' switch.
260                          print "true\n" if $xyz
261
262     -v             Enables verbose mode.  Ruby will print its version at the
263                    beginning and set the variable $VERBOSE to true.  Some
264                    methods print extra messages if this variable is true.  If
265                    this switch is given, and no other switches are present,
266                    Ruby quits after printing its version.
267
268     -w             Enables verbose mode without printing version message at
269                    the beginning.  It sets the $VERBOSE variable to true.
270
271     -x[directory]  Tells Ruby that the script is embedded in a message.
272                    Leading garbage will be discarded until the first line
273                    that starts with “#!” and contains the string, “ruby”.
274                    Any meaningful switches on that line will be applied.  The
275                    end of the script must be specified with either EOF, ^D
276                    (control-D), ^Z (control-Z), or the reserved word __END__.
277                    If the directory name is specified, Ruby will switch to
278                    that directory before executing script.
279
280     -y
281     --yydebug      DO NOT USE.
282
283                    Turns on compiler debug mode.  Ruby will print a bunch of
284                    internal state messages during compilation.  Only specify
285                    this switch you are going to debug the Ruby interpreter.
286
287     --disable-FEATURE
288     --enable-FEATURE
289                    Disables (or enables) the specified FEATURE.
290                    --disable-gems
291                    --enable-gems      Disables (or enables) RubyGems
292                                       libraries.  By default, Ruby will load
293                                       the latest version of each installed
294                                       gem. The Gem constant is true if
295                                       RubyGems is enabled, false if other‐
296                                       wise.
297
298                    --disable-rubyopt
299                    --enable-rubyopt   Ignores (or considers) the RUBYOPT
300                                       environment variable. By default, Ruby
301                                       considers the variable.
302
303                    --disable-all
304                    --enable-all       Disables (or enables) all features.
305
306     --dump=target  Dump some informations.
307
308                    Prints the specified target.  target can be one of;
309
310                          version version description same as --version
311
312                          usage   brief usage message same as -h
313
314                          help    Show long help message same as --help
315
316                          syntax  check of syntax same as -c --yydebug
317
318                          yydebug compiler debug mode, same as --yydebug
319
320                                  Only specify this switch if you are going to
321                                  debug the Ruby interpreter.
322
323                          parsetree
324
325                          parsetree_with_comment AST nodes tree
326
327                                  Only specify this switch if you are going to
328                                  debug the Ruby interpreter.
329
330                          insns   disassembled instructions
331
332                                  Only specify this switch if you are going to
333                                  debug the Ruby interpreter.
334
335     --verbose      Enables verbose mode without printing version message at
336                    the beginning.  It sets the $VERBOSE variable to true.  If
337                    this switch is given, and no script arguments (script file
338                    or -e options) are present, Ruby quits immediately.
339

ENVIRONMENT

341     RUBYLIB    A colon-separated list of directories that are added to Ruby's
342                library load path ($:). Directories from this environment
343                variable are searched before the standard load path is
344                searched.
345
346                e.g.:
347                      RUBYLIB="$HOME/lib/ruby:$HOME/lib/rubyext"
348
349     RUBYOPT    Additional Ruby options.
350
351                e.g.
352                      RUBYOPT="-w -Ke"
353
354                Note that RUBYOPT can contain only -d, -E, -I, -K, -r, -T, -U,
355                -v, -w, -W, --debug, --disable-FEATURE and --enable-FEATURE.
356
357     RUBYPATH   A colon-separated list of directories that Ruby searches for
358                Ruby programs when the -S flag is specified.  This variable
359                precedes the PATH environment variable.
360
361     RUBYSHELL  The path to the system shell command.  This environment vari‐
362                able is enabled for only mswin32, mingw32, and OS/2 platforms.
363                If this variable is not defined, Ruby refers to COMSPEC.
364
365     PATH       Ruby refers to the PATH environment variable on calling Ker‐
366                nel#system.
367
368     And Ruby depends on some RubyGems related environment variables unless
369     RubyGems is disabled.  See the help of gem(1) as below.
370
371           % gem help
372

GC ENVIRONMENT

374     The Ruby garbage collector (GC) tracks objects in fixed-sized slots, but
375     each object may have auxiliary memory allocations handled by the malloc
376     family of C standard library calls ( malloc(3), calloc(3), and
377     realloc(3)).  In this documentatation, the "heap" refers to the Ruby
378     object heap of fixed-sized slots, while "malloc" refers to auxiliary
379     allocations commonly referred to as the "process heap".  Thus there are
380     at least two possible ways to trigger GC:
381
382           1       Reaching the object limit.
383
384           2       Reaching the malloc limit.
385
386     In Ruby 2.1, the generational GC was introduced and the limits are
387     divided into young and old generations, providing two additional ways to
388     trigger a GC:
389
390           3       Reaching the old object limit.
391
392           4       Reaching the old malloc limit.
393
394     There are currently 4 possible areas where the GC may be tuned by the
395     following 11 environment variables:
396     RUBY_GC_HEAP_INIT_SLOTS                Initial allocation slots.  Intro‐
397                                            duced in Ruby 2.1, default: 10000.
398
399     RUBY_GC_HEAP_FREE_SLOTS                Prepare at least this amount of
400                                            slots after GC.  Allocate this
401                                            number slots if there are not
402                                            enough slots.  Introduced in Ruby
403                                            2.1, default: 4096
404
405     RUBY_GC_HEAP_GROWTH_FACTOR             Increase allocation rate of heap
406                                            slots by this factor.  Introduced
407                                            in Ruby 2.1, default: 1.8, mini‐
408                                            mum: 1.0 (no growth)
409
410     RUBY_GC_HEAP_GROWTH_MAX_SLOTS          Allocation rate is limited to this
411                                            number of slots, preventing exces‐
412                                            sive allocation due to
413                                            RUBY_GC_HEAP_GROWTH_FACTOR.
414                                            Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default: 0
415                                            (no limit)
416
417     RUBY_GC_HEAP_OLDOBJECT_LIMIT_FACTOR    Perform a full GC when the number
418                                            of old objects is more than R * N,
419                                            where R is this factor and N is
420                                            the number of old objects after
421                                            the last full GC.  Introduced in
422                                            Ruby 2.1.1, default: 2.0
423
424     RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT                   The initial limit of young genera‐
425                                            tion allocation from the malloc-
426                                            family.  GC will start when this
427                                            limit is reached.  Default: 16MB
428
429     RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT_MAX               The maximum limit of young genera‐
430                                            tion allocation from malloc before
431                                            GC starts.  Prevents excessive
432                                            malloc growth due to RUBY_GC_MAL‐
433                                            LOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR.  Intro‐
434                                            duced in Ruby 2.1, default: 32MB.
435
436     RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR     Increases the limit of young gen‐
437                                            eration malloc calls, reducing GC
438                                            frequency but increasing malloc
439                                            growth until RUBY_GC_MAL‐
440                                            LOC_LIMIT_MAX is reached.  Intro‐
441                                            duced in Ruby 2.1, default: 1.4,
442                                            minimum: 1.0 (no growth)
443
444     RUBY_GC_OLDMALLOC_LIMIT                The initial limit of old genera‐
445                                            tion allocation from malloc, a
446                                            full GC will start when this limit
447                                            is reached.  Introduced in Ruby
448                                            2.1, default: 16MB
449
450     RUBY_GC_OLDMALLOC_LIMIT_MAX            The maximum limit of old genera‐
451                                            tion allocation from malloc before
452                                            a full GC starts.  Prevents exces‐
453                                            sive malloc growth due to
454                                            RUBY_GC_OLDMAL‐
455                                            LOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR.  Intro‐
456                                            duced in Ruby 2.1, default: 128MB
457
458     RUBY_GC_OLDMALLOC_LIMIT_GROWTH_FACTOR  Increases the limit of old genera‐
459                                            tion malloc allocation, reducing
460                                            full GC frequency but increasing
461                                            malloc growth until RUBY_GC_OLD‐
462                                            MALLOC_LIMIT_MAX is reached.
463                                            Introduced in Ruby 2.1, default:
464                                            1.2, minimum: 1.0 (no growth)
465

STACK SIZE ENVIRONMENT

467     Stack size environment variables are implementation-dependent and subject
468     to change with different versions of Ruby.  The VM stack is used for
469     pure-Ruby code and managed by the virtual machine.  Machine stack is used
470     by the operating system and its usage is dependent on C extensions as
471     well as C compiler options.  Using lower values for these may allow
472     applications to keep more Fibers or Threads running; but increases the
473     chance of SystemStackError exceptions and segmentation faults (SIGSEGV).
474     These environment variables are available since Ruby 2.0.0.  All values
475     are specified in bytes.
476
477     RUBY_THREAD_VM_STACK_SIZE       VM stack size used at thread creation.
478                                     default: 131072 (32-bit CPU) or 262144
479                                     (64-bit)
480
481     RUBY_THREAD_MACHINE_STACK_SIZE  Machine stack size used at thread cre‐
482                                     ation.  default: 524288 or 1048575
483
484     RUBY_FIBER_VM_STACK_SIZE        VM stack size used at fiber creation.
485                                     default: 65536 or 131072
486
487     RUBY_FIBER_MACHINE_STACK_SIZE   Machine stack size used at fiber cre‐
488                                     ation.  default: 262144 or 524288
489

SEE ALSO

491     https://www.ruby-lang.org/     The official web site.
492     https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/  Comprehensive catalog of Ruby libraries.
493

REPORTING BUGS

495     ·   Security vulnerabilities should be reported via an email to
496         security@ruby-lang.org.  Reported problems will be published after
497         being fixed.
498
499     ·   Other bugs and feature requests can be reported via the Ruby Issue
500         Tracking System (https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/).  Do not report secu‐
501         rity vulnerabilities via this system because it publishes the vulner‐
502         abilities immediately.
503

AUTHORS

505     Ruby is designed and implemented by Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@netlab.jp>.
506
507     See ⟨https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby/wiki/Contributors⟩ for con‐
508     tributors to Ruby.
509
510UNIX                            April 14, 2018                            UNIX
Impressum