From the FAQ [L1 ] (escargo 16 Jan 2008 - This gives a file not found error.):
RLH Scales well? In what way?
Ruby doesn't have true threads and is known to have performance issues, a quote from a rant of a long-time Ruby user [L2 ] notes about RoR:
The home page for Ruby is http://www.ruby-lang.org/
Its most articulate advocates write such descriptions as,
A lot of the attention Ruby has gotten lately is due to Ruby on Rails[L3 ].
During Oct 2007, [L4 ] was making "Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications" available in PDF format for free...
This author summaries Rail's guiding principles as:
See [L6 ] for an intro to Ruby on Rails
There is a Ruby/Tk if you want to bring your Tk skills into a new world:
require 'tk'
root = TkRoot.new() { title "Hello, world!" }
Tk.mainloop()(from [L7 ]) More on Ruby/Tk (for MacOS!) appears in the "Ruby/Tk Primer: Creating a cron GUI Interface with Ruby/Tk" [L8 ].
Note, however, that at least one survey [L9 ] suggests that acceptance of RubyTk is dwindling.
What: Ruby Where: http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ext_tk.html http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ Description: Programming language for quick and easy programming. A clean, consistent language design where everything is an object, CLU style iterators, singleton classes/methods, and lexical closures. Makes use of Tk (with bindings similar in concept to Perl/Tk) for its GUI support. Currently at version 1.8.4 . Updated: 08/2003 Contact: mailto:[email protected]
See [L10 ] for more information. (escargo 16 Jan 2008 - This gives a file not found error. This link [L11 ] is about Ruby Tk.)
This [L12 ] review of Ruby Cookbook tries to give a sense for how Ruby feels.
RS: Like Scheme, Ruby has arbitrary-size integers as default - another hint that Tcl should have it too... Octet-packed integers come to mind..
AK: I consider the Octet-packed integers more something of a file-format, and less of an in-memory format. Note aside: In Slim Binaries I refer to the paper about Universal Symbol Files. This paper advances the notion of octet-packed integers too, albeit slightly differently than metakit if I read the code right. - RS: Well, a very simple alternative would be to just keep the string rep and let expr work on that if it runs into a "integer value too large to represent".
NEM notes in Jan 2008 that Tcl 8.5 does indeed now have arbitrary-size integers.
See [L13 ] for one comparison of Ruby to C++, CLOS, Dylan, Java, Objective C, Perl, PHP, Python, Smalltalk,
Ruby vs Tcl:
http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2006/03/06/ruby-vs-tcl
APN My personal experience with Ruby is that it is indeed a fun language to program in as claimed. However, fun does not necessarily equate to productivity and I find Tcl much more productive without losing any of the fun part of it.
ruby-tcl apparently lets you create Tcl interpreters from within Ruby. The author, Sam Stephenson, unveiled it at RubyConf 2008 during his talk, "Tcl for Rubyists", which you can watch at [L14 ] (the demo begins around 40 mins 15 secs). The code itself can be downloaded from [L15 ].
iu2 A small comparison: Given the file data.txt that contains numbers "1 2 3 4..10". We want to sum the multiplications of pairs, that is, 1*2 + 3*4 + 5*6..., here are some snippets:
tcl
set fid [open data.txt r]
set txt [read $fid]
close $fid
set sum 0
foreach {x y} $txt {
incr sum [expr {$x * $y}]
}
puts $sumpython
with file('data.txt') as f: txt = f.read()
nums = map(int, txt.split())
pairs = [nums[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(nums), 2)]
s = sum(x * y for x, y in pairs)
print sruby
sum = open('data.txt', 'r') {|f|
f.read.split.map {|a| a.to_i}.each_slice(2).inject(0) {|sum, pair| sum + pair[0] * pair[1]}
}
puts sumDec The Tcl, although I would code it slightly different, and Python snippets are quite readable, which to me is good coding style, the Ruby snippet...
Mirell Whoever wrote that Ruby should be shot, and I think it's trying to be intentionally obtuse.
ruby
sum = 0
IO.read("ruby-numbers").split.each_slice(2) {|a,b| sum = sum + a.to_i * b.to_i}
puts sumAnd done. Less lines than Tcl, and not as intentionally obtuse as the above example.
DKF: Putting lots of stuff on a line is good style in Ruby? I guess that's a style difference with Tcl; we tend to prefer to use more newlines, spreading our code out...
makr (2009-11-23): Yes, in other languages (e.g. Java) this kind of coding is called a Trainwreck. Good coding practice as e.g. in The Law of Demeter should prevent this and ensures maintainability of the code. So it is not cool to say: See, I can do more in only one line than you could! but to say: See, I can still read and understand the code half a year after I wrote it! ...
diam 16/03/2010 I agree that fewer line doesn't mean better code! But the ruby version of the tcl code above could be written more tcl like :
ruby (shortest yet readable)
txt = File.read "data.txt"
sum = 0
txt.split.each_slice(2) do |a,b|
sum += a.to_i * b.to_i
end
puts sumruby shouldn't be that iterative
nakilon: method chaining should be used
puts File.read("data.txt").split.map(&:to_i).each_slice(2).
inject(0){ |s,(a,b)| s + a * b }
AM (12 august 2009) I am not sure I understand the complete concept of code blocks well enough, but Tcl has code blocks too:
set block {puts $elem}
foreach elem $list $blockis an - admittedly - primitive example. One awkward aspect of course is the use of a local variable in the block of code, but that can be taken care of:
set block {puts $elem}
foreach elem $list {apply {{elem block} {eval $block}} $elem $block}or via:
proc block {vars code} {
foreach v $vars {upvar 1 $v $v}
eval $code
}
set block {puts $elem}
foreach elem $list {block {elem} $block} DKF: Tcl doesn't bind variables at the block level, but rather at the level of the procedure (or lambda term) so instead we'll normally use the caller's context. It's a different way of doing things.
PYK 2014-10-09: An excerpt from the Tcl Chatroom, 2014-10-09:
Rails-like (object-relational) web frameworks in Tcl: