We begin our exploration of Ruby with the interactive Ruby shell (irb). Open up a terminal and type:
shell> irb --simple-prompt >>
Make sure that you can get irb working before you move on.
Ruby as a calculator¶
At the simplest level, you can use ruby as a calculator. Try this:
shell> irb --simple-prompt >> 1 + 2 => 3 >> 4 - 3 => 1
Ruby understands all the basic arithmetic operators that you would expect:
To get out of irb type
shell> irb --simple-prompt >> 1 + 2 => 3 >> exit shell>
You should play around with these for a bit. Try this:
>> 3 * 2 => 6 >> 4 / 2 => 2 >> 3 - 5 => -2 >> 3 / 2 => 1
Notice what happens when you try to divide 3 by 2: the result is 1.
What happened? It turns out that Ruby understands two different classes of numbers:
- Integers (whole numbers).
- Floats (decimal numbers).
Numbers in Ruby¶
An integer is a whole number, like 1, 2, -5, etc. When you operate using only integers, Ruby will give you an Integer answer.
3/2 is 1.5, but that is not an integer, so Ruby gives you 1 instead.
A float is a number with decimal places, like 3.14, 1.5, 3.0, etc. When you operate with Floats Ruby gives you a Float answer. For example:
shell> irb --simple-prompt >> 3.0 / 2.0 => 1.5
Before we wrap up this chapter, let’s look at two more operators:
Notice how the remainder operator ‘%’ behaves with decimals. In this example, 2 goes twice into 5.1 and there is 1.1 left over.