[#289458] Parsing JSON (#155) — Ruby Quiz <james@...>

The three rules of Ruby Quiz:

86 messages 2008/02/01
[#289675] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — steve <oksteev@...> 2008/02/03

Hey guys

[#289709] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahurin@...> 2008/02/04

On Feb 3, 2008 8:14 AM, steve <oksteev@yahoo.com> wrote:

[#289712] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — Clifford Heath <no@...> 2008/02/04

Eric Mahurin wrote:

[#289715] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahurin@...> 2008/02/04

On Feb 3, 2008 6:25 PM, Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> wrote:

[#289718] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — Clifford Heath <no@...> 2008/02/04

Eric Mahurin wrote:

[#289722] Re: [QUIZ] Parsing JSON (#155) — "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahurin@...> 2008/02/04

On Feb 3, 2008 6:39 PM, Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> wrote:

[#289557] Comparing Active Record VS Datamapper...? — Softmind Technology <softmindtechnology@...>

Hello,

15 messages 2008/02/02
[#289633] Re: Comparing Active Record VS Datamapper...? — Ilan Berci <coder68@...> 2008/02/02

Softmind Technology wrote:

[#289636] Re: Comparing Active Record VS Datamapper...? — "s.ross" <cwdinfo@...> 2008/02/03

On 2/2/08 3:56 PM, "Ilan Berci" <coder68@yahoo.com> wrote:

[#289572] Extracting vowels and consonants using regular expression — Dondi <Donovan.Dillon@...>

I am trying to parse a string and extract all vowels and consonants

10 messages 2008/02/02

[#289579] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc. — Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@...>

FastRI is an alternative to the ri documentation browser for Ruby.

21 messages 2008/02/02
[#289683] Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc. — botp <botpena@...> 2008/02/03

On Feb 3, 2008 1:07 AM, Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@acm.org> wrote:

[#290164] Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc. — Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net> 2008/02/06

On Feb 3, 2008, at 07:40 AM, botp wrote:

[#291478] Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc. — Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@...> 2008/02/18

On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 07:52:20AM +0900, Eric Hodel wrote:

[#291493] Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc. — James Gray <james@...> 2008/02/18

On Feb 18, 2008, at 5:53 AM, Mauricio Fernandez wrote:

[#289674] Ruby for game programming — t3chn0n3rd <darrin_allen@...>

Is anyone using Ruby for game programming?

17 messages 2008/02/03

[#289859] how to say # in ruby — Dan Ford <wade@...>

I'm accustomed to usenet as opposed to whatever this is.

22 messages 2008/02/04

[#289900] Introducing Waves - Web App Framework — Dan Yoder <dan@...>

I am pleased to announce the first beta release of Waves, an open-

32 messages 2008/02/05
[#290017] Re: [ANN] Introducing Waves - Web App Framework — Daniel DeLorme <dan-ml@...42.com> 2008/02/06

Dan Yoder wrote:

[#290001] Computer Science Problems — markonlinux@...

Hi all,

33 messages 2008/02/05

[#290020] Ruby type-safe? Ruby strongly/weakly typed? Ruby pitfalls? — "rule.rule.rule@..." <rule.rule.rule@...>

Hi,

36 messages 2008/02/06

[#290022] simple ruby proxy server? — Dt Town <dtown22@...>

I am trying to right at application which will simply record the headers

13 messages 2008/02/06

[#290167] Array Practice — Adam Akhtar <adamtemporary@...>

As some of you may know from previous threads im trying to practice

27 messages 2008/02/06

[#290195] info on block arguments — Russell Me <russ@...>

I'm trying to pick up ruby and I'm impressed by all the cool stuff it

24 messages 2008/02/07

[#290208] idiom I've not seen before — Rob Saul <wyrd@...>

12 messages 2008/02/07

[#290244] Parsing JSON (#155) — Ruby Quiz <james@...>

We saw a large variety of solutions for this week's problem. Many of them used

13 messages 2008/02/07

[#290245] using net::ssh shell to sudo to another user and execute commands — "wbsurfver@..." <wbsurfver@...>

11 messages 2008/02/07

[#290272] is lots of files with Threads faster? — Chris Richards <evilgeenius@...>

Im required to open 50+ files and parse the data in them. WOuld using

11 messages 2008/02/07

[#290296] BigDecimal.new('15.25') == 15.25, false ?? — Henry Jones <mathieu.houle@...>

Hi,

14 messages 2008/02/07

[#290328] trouble with FileUtils.rm() -- Invalid arguement error — an an <dtown22@...>

I have been screwing with this for the last hour, and I still cant get

12 messages 2008/02/08

[#290374] Internal Rate of Return (#156) — Ruby Quiz <james@...>

The three rules of Ruby Quiz:

47 messages 2008/02/08

[#290483] Beginner help - txt dungeon — Jonathon Hartoon <ezrickknight@...>

Hi. I have tried to learn other programming languages before and ruby

20 messages 2008/02/09

[#290716] non case sensitive searching — Adam Akhtar <adamtemporary@...>

If i want to see if a list contains a particular word how would i go

15 messages 2008/02/11

[#290735] Rev/actor TCP monkey patching — fedzor <fedzor@...>

Short and sweet -

13 messages 2008/02/11

[#290825] How do C programmers do unit testing? — "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>

This may seem like a silly question, but how do C programmers (assume

13 messages 2008/02/12

[#290931] Robert's Ruby Riddle: Local or Method — "Robert Dober" <robert.dober@...>

Hi list I was just thinking it might fun to present some of Ruby's

10 messages 2008/02/13

[#290982] ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...>

I recently upgraded to ruby 1.8.6 on mac os x 10.4.7. I had ruby tk

47 messages 2008/02/13
[#290994] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Jeremy Henty <onepoint@...> 2008/02/13

On 2008-02-13, 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@yahoo.com> wrote:

[#291001] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/14

Jeremy Henty wrote:

[#291006] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Hidetoshi NAGAI <nagai@...> 2008/02/14

From: 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@yahoo.com>

[#291014] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/14

Hidetoshi NAGAI wrote:

[#291447] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Hidetoshi NAGAI <nagai@...> 2008/02/18

From: 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@yahoo.com>

[#291459] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/18

Hidetoshi NAGAI wrote:

[#291519] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...> 2008/02/18

On Feb 18, 2008, at 2:52 AM, 7stud -- wrote:

[#291529] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/18

Morton Goldberg wrote:

[#291556] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...> 2008/02/19

On Feb 18, 2008, at 3:05 PM, 7stud -- wrote:

[#291567] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/19

Morton Goldberg wrote:

[#291601] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...> 2008/02/19

On Feb 18, 2008, at 10:28 PM, 7stud -- wrote:

[#291603] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/19

Morton Goldberg wrote:

[#291621] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...> 2008/02/19

On Feb 19, 2008, at 7:05 AM, 7stud -- wrote:

[#291626] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/19

Morton Goldberg wrote:

[#291637] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...> 2008/02/19

[#291707] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/20

John Joyce wrote:

[#291742] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...> 2008/02/20

On Feb 19, 2008, at 7:41 PM, 7stud -- wrote:

[#291747] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/20

Morton Goldberg wrote:

[#291819] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — "Leslie Viljoen" <leslieviljoen@...> 2008/02/20

On Feb 20, 2008 8:59 AM, 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@yahoo.com> wrote:

[#291846] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...> 2008/02/20

[#291967] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/21

John Joyce wrote:

[#292774] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Tim Ferrell <s0nspark@...> 2008/02/27

7stud -- wrote:

[#292964] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/29

Tim Ferrell wrote:

[#292971] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Tim Ferrell <s0nspark@...> 2008/02/29

7stud -- wrote:

[#292992] Re: ruby tk -- how do you get it working? — Tim Ferrell <s0nspark@...> 2008/02/29

Tim Ferrell wrote:

[#290985] my noob "numbering lines" programe. How to improve? — Adam Akhtar <adamtemporary@...>

Give us hints on how to improve this program. If you want to show your

11 messages 2008/02/13

[#291013] Memcached: Dealing with unknown keys — Tony Garcia <tony23@...>

I was wondering if there is a way to handle reading keys when you don't

14 messages 2008/02/14

[#291039] Internal Rate of Return (#156) — Ruby Quiz <james@...>

Solving the IRR equation is essentially a matter of computational guesswork.

15 messages 2008/02/14

[#291084] object specific methods and id — UpsNDowns <tnospamhomas@...>

Hi,

24 messages 2008/02/14
[#291088] Re: object specific methods and id — 7stud -- <bbxx789_05ss@...> 2008/02/14

UpsNDowns wrote:

[#291089] Re: object specific methods and id — Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...> 2008/02/14

[#291184] Re: object specific methods and id — UpsNDowns <tnospamhomas@...> 2008/02/15

Thanks for the reply.

[#291261] Re: object specific methods and id — Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...> 2008/02/16

[#291302] Re: object specific methods and id — UpsNDowns <tnospamhomas@...> 2008/02/16

Gary Wright wrote:

[#291141] The Smallest Circle (#157) — Matthew D Moss <matthew.moss@...>

The three rules of Ruby Quiz 2:

61 messages 2008/02/15

[#291192] Proper way to RDoc markup? — Serg Koren <skoren@...>

Hi,

12 messages 2008/02/15

[#291269] Alter String base class to perform new (private methods) before returning itself when called by print statements — "Steven G. Harms" <steven.harms@...>

class String

8 messages 2008/02/16

[#291280] GC error ? — Piotr Sawicki <piotr.sawicki@...>

Run this program and observe memory usage.

26 messages 2008/02/16
[#291584] Re: GC error ? — "evanwebb@..." <evanwebb@...> 2008/02/19

On Feb 16, 4:12m, Piotr Sawicki <piotr.sawi...@gmail.com> wrote:

[#291281] TRAC - Trac, Project Leads, Python, and Mr. Noah Kantrowitz (sanitizer) — Ilias Lazaridis <ilias@...>

Essence:

14 messages 2008/02/16

[#291354] Slide Show v0.1 - A Free Web Alternative to PowerPoint and KeyNote in Ruby Now Live — "Gerald Bauer" <geraldbauer2007@...>

Hello,

12 messages 2008/02/17

[#291381] displaying user inputed arrays — Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@...>

[code]

36 messages 2008/02/17
[#291405] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — Wally T Terrible <wally.terrible@...> 2008/02/17

I'm not entirely sure what you intend to do. If you wanted to get five

[#291424] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — Siep Korteling <s.korteling@...> 2008/02/17

Wally T Terrible wrote:

[#291858] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/02/20

On Feb 17, 2008 9:18 AM, Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@gmail.com> wrote:

[#291877] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/02/20

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Todd Benson <caduceass@gmail.com> wrote:

[#291884] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@...> 2008/02/20

Thanks that works!

[#291887] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@...> 2008/02/20

Isaac Toothyxdip wrote:

[#291899] Re: displaying user inputed arrays — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/02/20

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Isaac Toothyxdip <toothyxdip@gmail.com> wrote:

[#291515] Connecting to HyperTerminal — Active View <active.view@...>

Hi all...

16 messages 2008/02/18
[#291525] Re: Connecting to HyperTerminal — Ben Bleything <ben@...> 2008/02/18

On Tue, Feb 19, 2008, Active View wrote:

[#291630] Object#freeze as a basis for caching of method results? — "Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)" <shot@...>

Hello, ruby-talk.

12 messages 2008/02/19

[#291664] ||= [] idiom — "Leslie Viljoen" <leslieviljoen@...>

I often make use of this idiom to add something to an array in a hash of arrays:

24 messages 2008/02/19

[#291677] Is there any object-oriented File class in ruby ? — tom_33 <tomjbr.56770318@...>

I am very new to Ruby and my question is about trying to understand

22 messages 2008/02/19

[#291682] HELP: Need to continue the loop after the exception — mirth <mirthcyy@...>

hi guys,

12 messages 2008/02/19

[#291717] IP Address to Decimal - is an one-liner possible? — "Tiago Pinto" <thpinto@...>

Hi guys,

22 messages 2008/02/20

[#291774] What does *args do? — Stedwick <philip.brocoum@...>

I sometimes see funcs declared with def fun (blah, *args)

14 messages 2008/02/20

[#291853] 32bit vs 64bit vs UML performance — Lionel Bouton <lionel-subscription@...>

I've run the QUIZ benchmark on several systems to check their relative

17 messages 2008/02/20

[#291990] beginner's problem with sqlite3 — Tom Cloyd <tomcloyd@...>

It would be helpful if the sqlite3-ruby documentation offered one or two

15 messages 2008/02/21

[#292056] Where does instance_eval _magically_ set the variable to? — Andrew Chen <hangfei@...>

Hi,

13 messages 2008/02/21

[#292080] Newbie Mem Leak Issue — Keith Barr <keith.barr@...>

I am fairly new to Ruby and a program that I have created seems to have

14 messages 2008/02/21

[#292186] gsub("\\", "\\\\") seems unintuitive — John Woods <jqwoods@...>

The following confusing behavior is noted in the pickaxe book (2nd ed)

11 messages 2008/02/22

[#292250] ANN: Teach yourself Ruby - the hard way! — "Martin DeMello" <martindemello@...>

A frequent question from Ruby newcomers is "Okay, I've read the

12 messages 2008/02/23

[#292269] Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Avdi Grimm" <avdi@...>

Hi folks,

118 messages 2008/02/23
[#292362] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — furtive.clown@... 2008/02/24

[#292366] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...> 2008/02/24

[#292961] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — Trans <transfire@...> 2008/02/29

[#292978] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahurin@...> 2008/02/29

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 6:20 AM, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

[#292274] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahurin@...> 2008/02/23

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 3:07 PM, Avdi Grimm <avdi@avdi.org> wrote:

[#292385] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — James Gray <james@...> 2008/02/25

On Feb 23, 2008, at 4:23 PM, Eric Mahurin wrote:

[#292281] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...> 2008/02/23

Avdi Grimm wrote:

[#292514] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Michal Suchanek" <hramrach@...> 2008/02/25

On 24/02/2008, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

[#292584] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Jones, Brian - McClatchy Interactive" <bjones@...> 2008/02/26

I'd be at least a little interested in potentially offering developers

[#292594] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — Trans <transfire@...> 2008/02/26

[#292601] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — James Britt <james.britt@...> 2008/02/26

Trans wrote:

[#292603] Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby — "Avdi Grimm" <avdi@...> 2008/02/26

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 1:25 PM, James Britt <james.britt@gmail.com> wrote:

[#292368] Suprising behaviour with "def property=" method — "Farrel Lifson" <farrel.lifson@...>

I had a bit of a surprise with the following

14 messages 2008/02/24

[#292394] NoMethodError: private method `to_date' — Sukeerthi Adiga <sukeerthiadiga@...>

Loading development environment.

12 messages 2008/02/25

[#292398] Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>

I wrote up an article on Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb that

58 messages 2008/02/25
[#294446] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...> 2008/03/13

Hi,

[#294479] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...> 2008/03/13

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 01:02:52AM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

[#294491] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...> 2008/03/13

Hi,

[#294551] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...> 2008/03/14

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 07:43:28AM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

[#294559] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...> 2008/03/14

Hi,

[#294591] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Tanaka Akira <akr@...> 2008/03/14

In article <E1JaB7P-0000Zc-QP@x61.netlab.jp>,

[#294639] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...> 2008/03/15

Hi,

[#294917] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Tanaka Akira <akr@...> 2008/03/18

In article <E1JaM9H-0000jj-AB@x61.netlab.jp>,

[#295093] Re: Thread#raise, Thread#kill, and timeout.rb are unsafe — Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...> 2008/03/19

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:04:40PM +0900, Tanaka Akira wrote:

[#292540] Math problem — grandmabeckie@...

I am try to help my daughter:

25 messages 2008/02/26

[#292704] Getting number of days in a month — Shandy Nantz <shandybleu@...>

This is probably an easy question but I am trying to get at the number

26 messages 2008/02/27

[#292781] MacRuby — "Laurent Sansonetti" <laurent.sansonetti@...>

Hi,

16 messages 2008/02/28

[#292795] Need a regex searching html code — Chirantan <chirantan.rajhans@...>

I have an html code into string. I want to retrieve the content (Can

18 messages 2008/02/28

[#292816] proc.new and return — S2 <email@...>

I am sure this is a really easy question for most of you, but i was not

15 messages 2008/02/28

[#292839] Proposed Solutions - Was [ Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby ] — hemant <gethemant@...>

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:55 PM, James Britt <james.britt@gmail.com> wrote:

17 messages 2008/02/28

[#292860] Named sprintf parameters — Trans <transfire@...>

I have a question and perhaps a bit of challenge for those with mad

15 messages 2008/02/28

[#292865] constants defined in Kernel are also defined in Object? — Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>

This seems peculiar to me:

15 messages 2008/02/28

[#293044] making a monthly calendar... — Mikkel Bruun <mikkel@...>

Hey

25 messages 2008/02/29
[#293088] Re: making a monthly calendar... — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/03/01

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Mikkel Bruun <mikkel@helenius.dk> wrote:

[#293090] Re: making a monthly calendar... — Mikkel Bruun <mikkel@...> 2008/03/01

Todd Benson wrote:

[#293092] Re: making a monthly calendar... — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/03/01

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 2:34 AM, Mikkel Bruun <mikkel@helenius.dk> wrote:

[#293223] Re: making a monthly calendar... — "Todd Benson" <caduceass@...> 2008/03/03

Oh my goodness! A thousand apologies. I gave you a rotating month. See below.

[#293264] Re: making a monthly calendar... — Mikkel Bruun <mikkel@...> 2008/03/03

So I ended up with:

Re: Computer Science Problems

From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-02-10 01:05:08 UTC
List: ruby-talk #290566
On 09.02.2008 23:53, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> On 2/9/08, Christopher Dicely <cmdicely@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 6, 2008 12:37 PM, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 10:47:51AM +0900, James Gray wrote:
>>>> A Ruby algorithms book would be really nice to have.  (I have a Perl
>>>> book like that I've used a fair bit.)
>>> I'd love to find a Ruby algorithms book, myself.
>> Interestingly, I just ran into this online book, _Data Structures and Algorithms
>> with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Ruby_, at
>> http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus8/
> 
> Once more into the breach dear friends!
> 
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/5d50147449f0b532/67382c9359422e2f?lnk=gst&q=algorithm+books+ruby#67382c9359422e2f

You wrote:

> For example, I'm pretty sure that these two snippets will have
> different timing profiles
> 
> a = Array.new(300)
> a[200] = 1
> 
> and
> 
> a = Array.new(190)
> a[200] = 1
> 
> Since Ruby arrays are dynamically sized, the second needs to
> reallocate and copy the contents.
> 
> So in these cases certain array stores might actually be O(n) where n
> is the length of the array rather than O(1).

This is actually not true: you need to compare apples with apples.  You 
cannot assign a C array beyond its boundaries (well, you *can* - 
sometimes).  So you would have to compare assignments within the 
preallocated size.  Same reasonings apply to the size in memory.  Fact 
is, you can use Ruby Arrays like C Arrays but most of the time you don't.

The fact that Ruby is interpreted and a completely different language 
than C does not invalidate complexity theory.  Keep in mind that O(n) is 
just an approximation really meaning "the effort grows asymptotically 
linear for n larger than a certain threshold" - or, slightly different, 
"the effort is O(n*X+C)" with X and C being constants.  Eventually 
runtime will be determined by the number of input parameters and 
duplication of this number will duplicate runtime.

So even though Ruby exposes different runtime characteristics it can be 
still used to study algorithms (actually I believe it is well suited 
because the clutterfree syntax eases focusing on the algorithmic part) 
and complexity theory.

Of course, this does not free us from measuring and performance tuning. 
  Often some implementations in Ruby are faster because the use library 
code implemented in C although in theory they should be slower.

You have one point though: often these ported books do not use features 
of the target language well and the code presented tends to look strange.

Kind regards

	robert

In This Thread