Re: New to Ruby Need a little help from the pros.

hey James -

  well, finding a complete list of all the methods (not usually called 
functions in ruby) you'll need/want to use is a pretty tall order...

  there are ruby kernel methods 
(http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Kernel.html) that you can call 
pretty much anywhere - things like `puts`, `require`, etc. etc.

  since you'll be working with words, take a look at the String class 
and it's methods (http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/String.html) - one 
way to create a String like this...

some_string = "This is a String!"

  ...now play around with all the different methods to get a feel for 
how they work and what they do.

  some very handy methods that most every ruby object shares (and a 
String, like just about everything else in ruby is an object,) are 
#methods, and #instance_methods.

  to see all the methods that can be called on an instance of String, 
you could do this:

String.instance_methods.sort.each{|m| puts m}

  or

string = "This is a String!"
string.methods.sort.each{|m| puts m}

  both #methods and #instance_methods return an Array 
(http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Array.html) which has the #sort, and 
#each methods.  neat, right?

  the docs are good, check out the basic classes and their methods and 
play around with them some.

  seems like loops and iterators will be an important part of your 
project as well - there's a good tutorial here: 
http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/a-wealth-of-ruby-loops-and-iterators/

  not sure what you're reading, but i'd recommend _why's "poignant 
guide" (http://www.rubyinside.com/media/poignant-guide.pdf,) Dave 
Thomas's "pragmatic guide" 
(http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/thomas05a.pdf), and Chris Pine's 
"Learn to Program" (http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/.)  there are many 
other excellent tutorials, and many posts on this list about them...

  fool around with some things, then post back with some code and some 
questions!

  - j

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