From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2008-04-27T23:53:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Has anyone read this book?

If you've done C, you've come across the the most important data  
structures for it: structs, unions, enums, arrays, pointers, linked  
lists
Well, really just knowing what of the standard types to use for what.

With Object Oriented programming (which can be done in C... just not  
gracefully) you get other things that are very useful and sometimes  
language dependent.
In particular collection or container classes that include arrays and  
structs but take things to a new level of convenience.
Hashes are commonly used with key-value pairs (some languages call  
them dictionaries or other names)

The most unique to ruby is the old Symbol class. Get the rest of Ruby  
and Symbol will make more sense, especially when and how it is useful.
Ruby's other unique feature is its ability to enumerate over its  
collection classes with great ease and power.

Beyond that, any data structures book will give you ideas.
Take a look at other people's code too.