From: Alex Gutteridge <alexg@...>
Date: 2007-06-05T15:07:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Another beginner question

On 5 Jun 2007, at 14:43, Micah Carrick wrote:

> Sorry if my "newbie" questions are excessive. I promise that if/ 
> when I start getting on my feet with Ruby programming I will  
> contribute back to the learning process 10-fold. That's how I role.
>
> Simple question:
>
> I was turned on to Ruby via Ruby on Rails at the RailsConf here in  
> Portland via a friend. I was told there's a "plugin" (I'm assuming  
> for rails) for inline C code. What I'm wondering-- is as an  
> interpreted language, if there is a chunk of code that needs to  
> execute very quickly, is there a way to have C code that's  
> compiled? Perhaps a library?
>
> So, let's say I have a little GTK+ GUI that I wrote in Ruby to save  
> time, but it has some process-intensive routine-- could I write  
> that routine in C and have it as a compiled binary and run within  
> my Ruby code?
>

I've never used inline C in Ruby, but it is available (it is not  
Rails specific AFAIK). You can also write C code and compile as an  
extension:

http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ext_ruby.html

Alex Gutteridge

Bioinformatics Center
Kyoto University