From: Wyatt Greene <greenewm@...>
Date: 2008-05-04T11:00:14+09:00
Subject: Re: a ? b : c

On May 3, 10:42 am, Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackr...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
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> luka luka wrote:
>
> | And I have 1 question.
> | What is: =~
> | What operator is it?
>
> I strongly suggest you avail yourself of a copy of Programming Ruby (and
> The Ruby Way, too, if you can).
>
> The first edition of Programming Ruby is available free of charge online:
>
> http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
>
> This will get you started on the basics of Ruby, and saves you the
> annoyance of checking your inbox every two minutes. :)
>
> N.B.: Programming Ruby 1st Edition covers Ruby 1.6, but the basics
> haven't really changed (i.e. operators, keywords, and the like).
>
> - --
> Phillip Gawlowski
> Twitter: twitter.com/cynicalryan
> Blog:http://justarubyist.blogspot.com
>
> Use the good features of a language; avoid the bad ones.
> ~            - The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plaugher)
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For what it's worth:

The ?: operator is called the "conditional operator".  It is the only
ternary operator in Ruby (meaning the only operator that has three
operands).

The =~ is called the "pattern-matching operator".  It is related to
the !~ operator, which returns the boolean opposite of the =~
operator.

If you want a good, solid reference book in Ruby, I would recommend
"The Ruby Programming Language" by David Flanagan and Yukihiro
Matsumoto.  It might not be the best first book on Ruby, but in my
opinion it is the most complete reference book available about the
Ruby language.