Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.
In Ruby, everything is an object. Every bit of information and code can be given their own properties and actions. Object-oriented programming calls properties by the name instance variables and actions are known as methods. Ruby’s pure object-oriented approach is most commonly demonstrated by a bit of code which applies an action to a number.
* Many new methods
* New socket API (enhanced IPv6 support)
* New encodings
* Random class that supports various random number generators
* Time is reimplemented. There is no longer the year 2038 problem.
* some regexp enhancements
* $: no longer includes the current directory.
* dl is reimplemented on top of libffi.
* new psych library that wraps libyaml. You can use the library instead of syck.