Ruby Hacking Guide

The RHG is a book that explains how the ruby 1.7.x-1.8.x interpreter (the official C implementation of the Ruby language) works internally. The original book was based on the source code of ruby 1.7.3 so there are a few small differences to the current version of ruby. However, these differences may make the source code simpler to understand and the Ruby Hacking Guide is a good starting point before looking into the ruby source code. The version of the source code used can be downloaded here: http://i.loveruby.net/ja/rhg/ar/ruby-rhg.tar.gz.

This project is picking up from where Vincent Isambart and Clifford Escobar have left off [1], with the aim to translate the outstanding chapters to English to help Ruby hackers understand the internals of the MRI interpreter.

Note also the existence of this translation: http://hawthorne-press.com

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction

Part 1: Objects

• Chapter 1: Ruby language minimum
• Chapter 2: Objects
• Chapter 3: Names and name tables
• Chapter 4: Classes and modules
• Chapter 5: Garbage collection
• Chapter 6: Variables and constants
• Chapter 7: Security

Part 2: Syntax analysis

• Chapter 8: Ruby language details
• Chapter 9: Yacc crash course
• Chapter 10: Parser
• Chapter 11: Context-dependent scanner
• Chapter 12: Syntax tree construction

Part 3: Evaluation

• Chapter 13: Structure of the evaluator
• Chapter 14: Context
• Chapter 15: Methods
• Chapter 16: Blocks
• Chapter 17: Dynamic evaluation

Part 4: Around the evaluator

• Chapter 18: Loading
• Chapter 19: Threads
• Final chapter: Ruby's future