# Ruby Weekly News 21st - 27th November 2005 **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 30, 2005, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-21st-27th-november-2005/49133 "2005-11-30T13:19:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![timsuth](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/258eb7/32.png) [@timsuth](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/timsuth)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2005, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-21st-27th-november-2005/49133/1 "2005-11-30T13:19:21Z")
[http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20051127.html](http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20051127.html) # Ruby Weekly News 21st - 27th November 2005 Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week’s activity on the ruby-talk mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup, brought to you by Anonymous. (Thanks whoever it was, this week’s newsletter would have been a no-show without you.) [Contribute to the next newsletter.] # Articles and Announcements ``` * The Ruby Grammar Project -------------------------- MenTaLguY announced the creation of The Ruby Grammar Project, the ``` goal of which is to produce a formal specification for Ruby’s syntax and an ANTLR grammar. His aim is to describe the language as it exists, rather than proposing new syntax. ``` * Distributing Rails Applications (tutorial) -------------------------------------------- Erik V. announces a new version of his tutorial, ``` Distributing Rails Applications, updated for rails 0.14.3. ``` * Frappr! map for ruby-lang --------------------------- Daniel Cremer has created a Frappr! map for ruby-lang. * RailsConf 2006, June 22-25, Chicago IL ---------------------------------------- | Ruby Central, Inc. is pleased to announce the First ``` International | Rails Conference ([http://railsconf.org](http://railsconf.org)). The conference will be held | in Chicago, IL, USA from June 22-25, 2006. | | Brought to you by the same organization that has driven RubyConf for | five years running, RailsConf is destined to be a one-of-a-kind | affair. | | We already have David Heinemeier H., the creator of Rails as | well as Dave T., of The Pragmatic Programmers, lined up as | keynote speakers. Watch this space for more, exciting speaker | announcements as we get closer to the event. | | Registration will be limited, so be sure to subscribe to our RSS | feed to be notified when registration opens. We’re expecting the | conference to sell out. Don’t let yourself be one of the unlucky | ones that misses the cutoff! | | This is your chance to be part of history. Be there for the FIRST | one. Get the t-shirt. 😉 # User Group News ``` * Not-yet Phoenix.rb -------------------- James B. writes: | The 2nd meeting of Refresh Phoenix will be held on Tuesday, ``` December | 6, at the Common Ground coffee house in Scottsdale, AZ. | | Refresh Phoenix is a community of designers and developers working | to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of | Internet developers in the Phoenix metropolitan area. | | At the first meeting earlier this month there was strong showing of | people either currently using Ruby, or looking to get started. | Refresh Phoenix isn’t specifically about Ruby, but is a means for | helping designers and developers organize projects and meetings, and | I plan to use this next meeting to reboot the Phoenix Ruby Users | Group (AKA Phoenix.rb). | | Where: | | Common Grounds Coffee House | 8658 E Shea Blvd # 1, Scottsdale, AZ | (480) 222-4870 | | [http://rubyurl.com/qck](http://rubyurl.com/qck) | | When: | | On Tuesday, December, 6th from 6-8pm, though the semi-official stuff | starts around 7pm. | | More info: | | [http://refreshphoenix.org/](http://refreshphoenix.org/) # Quote of the Week ``` MenTaLguY on the Ruby Grammar Project: | Don't like ->{} ? Don't look at us. If matz says we get stabby | blocks, we get stabby blocks. ``` # Threads ## warning: default `to\_a’ will be obsolete David C. wonders what to use in place of foo.to\_a, now that Object#to\_a is being obsoleted. Christian N. suggests [\*foo]. James Edward G. II recommends Array( foo ). Either one works identically to the former foo.to\_a, returning the same object if it is already an array. Trans belatedly recommends Array[foo] instead, but Markus Koenig points out that his suggestion is equivalent to [foo], not to [\*foo]. ## system() on windows system() can behave very differently on Windows; different Rubyists present explanations and workarounds. ## PLATFORM tests Kaspar S. raises the prospect writing of a library which can be used to test platform strings to determine whether the program is running on some flavor of Windows or Unix, since there are so many possible variations. Several other posters point out that it is better to test for specific features and fall back as needed, rather than make assumptions based on the platform string (which can be misleading or ambiguous). As Kero succinctly puts it: “Duck platforming” ## problem with .each do Lady Michelle B. writes in concerning a Net::HTTP snippet: | Hiya. The book does things this way, so why doesn’t it work for me? | What’s going on? Lloyd Z. replies: | It turns out that Net::Http#get no longer returns a pair of values. It | has changed between ruby version 1.6 (from the edition of the book that | you probably have) and 1.8. This is explained in the method’s latest | documentation… | | In version 1.1 (ruby 1.6), this method returns a pair of objects, a | Net::HTTPResponse object and the entity body string. In version 1.2 | (ruby 1.8), this method returns a Net::HTTPResponse object. ## recursion cyberco writes: | I’m trying to print every combination of three characters from the range | (a…z). I thought recursion would be the most elegant solution, but that | got me quite confused 🙂 Any suggestions? Erik T. responds: (‘aaa’…‘zzz’).to\_a | Or ‘a’…‘zzz’ if you want every combination `up to’ 3 characters. Not recursive, but certainly elegant. Other posters presented a variety of recursive solutions. ## Symbol#inspect bug? Dominik B. notices that Symbol#inspect doesn’t always return a valid symbol literal. For example: irb(main):001:0\> p :“9” :9 =\> nil irb(main):002:0\> :9 SyntaxError: compile error (irb):2: syntax error from (irb):2 matz reports that this is fixed in Ruby 1.8.4. ## valgrind and embedded ruby Heiko L. notices that Ruby is producing warnings under valgrind when allocation exceeds a certain threshold. He wonders whether he is doing something wrong, or whether this is a Ruby bug. The answer appears to be the warnings are a side-effect of the marking process used by Ruby’s garbage collector, and are harmless. # New Releases ## Turing 0.0.7 Michal announces Turing 0.0.7, an easy-to-use and extensible Captcha implementation. Turing provides not only image-based Captchas, but also a textual Turing::Challenge which should be more friendly to visually-impaired users. ## ruby/audio 0.1.0 ruby/audio is a convenience wrapper around NArray and libsndfile. It should make audio work in Ruby much, much easier. ## Puppet Beta Two Luke K. announced the second beta release of Puppet, a Ruby-based server automation framework. | It lets you centrally manage every important aspect of your system using | a cross-platform specification language that manages all the separate | elements normally aggregated in different files, like users, cron jobs, | and hosts, along with obviously discrete elements like packages, | services, and files. The new version boasts significantly expanded functionality and cfengine integration to ease migration. ## Rant 0.5.0 Rant is a flexible build tool written entirely in Ruby, similar to Rake. ## RRobots 0.1 Following on fron last week’s thread, Simon Kröger introduces RRobots, his Ruby variation on the fighting-code-robots theme. | RRobots is a simulation environment for robots, these robots have a | scanner and a gun, can move forward and backwards and are entirely | controlled by ruby scripts. All robots are equal (well at the moment, | maybe this will change) except for the ai. ## xampl 0.1.0 Xampl is a tool for developing Ruby programs. It facilitates the `M’ part of an MVC architecture. It is meant to be very easy to use, supportive of idiomatic Ruby usage, and mostly invisible. It is similar to some parts of J2EE. ## win32-service 0.5.0 win32-service is a library for writing Windows services in Ruby, and is part of the Win32Utils project. This version introduces a service\_init hook which can be used for long-running initialization tasks which would otherwise cause the service to timeout on startup. is a library for writing Windows services in Ruby, and is part of the Win32Utils project. This version introduces a service\_init hook which can be used for long-running initialization tasks which would otherwise cause the service to timeout on startup. ## RWB 0.2.0 Pat Eyler announces the release of Ruby Web Bench 0.2.0. RWB is “a Ruby library designed to let you run performance/load tests against a webserver/website.”