CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubystandardsspecifications
carrutherji
carrutherji

Reputation: 1135

Is there a formal specification (like the Java Language Specification (JLS)) for Ruby?

Is there a definitive specification for Ruby, akin to the Java Language Specification for Java. Googling ruby language specification provides http://ruby-std.netlab.jp/ as a result, but the site is down and i am not sure whether it is current

Upvotes: 24

Views: 5160

Answers (3)

Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag

Reputation: 369428

There is a draft for a formal specification of Ruby. It is being developed by the Open Standards Promotion Center of the Information-Technology Promotion Agency (a Japanese government agency) for submission to the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee and then further on to the International Organization for Standardization.

However, nobody actually uses this specification. The specification that is actually being used is the directly executable RubySpec, which is used by all the major Ruby implementors like Rubinius, IronRuby, JRuby, MacRuby, MagLev and so on.

The three main differences between the ISO Draft Specification and RubySpec are:

  1. RubySpec is complete: it covers the entire Ruby language, and the entire core library, from version 1.8.7 to 1.9.2 and 1.9.3. The ISO Draft Specification only covers a very small subset of the intersection of 1.8 and 1.9.
  2. RubySpec is written in Ruby (which is a language that every Rubyist can read), the ISO Draft Specification is written in English, or rather in ISO Standardese (which is a language that only a handful of people on the planet can fully understand).
  3. RubySpec is executable: you can just run it against your Ruby implementation to see what you are still missing.

Another great source (pun intended) of information about the behavior of Ruby is the source code of the Rubinius kernel, which implements the semantics of the Ruby language and the Ruby core library. (Note: a lot of people prefer the source code of YARV, but I don't, for two reasons: firstly, YARV is in C, which is a language that not every Rubyist knows, whereas Rubinius is in Ruby, which (hopefully) every Rubiyst knows, and secondly, the Rubinius codebase is much better structured, well-designed, well-organized, well-tested, well-documented.)

Upvotes: 16

barlop
barlop

Reputation: 13753

If you go to

https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/2.6.0/syntax_rdoc.html

or

https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/

"The official Ruby API documentation"

https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/

https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/2.6.0/

then under 'pages' choose 'syntax'

Then you get this page, with its links to other relevant pages

https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/2.6.0/syntax_rdoc.html

The Ruby syntax is large and is split up into the following sections:

Literals
Numbers, Strings, Arrays, Hashes, etc.

Assignment Assignment and variables

Control Expressions
if, unless, while, until, for, break, next, redo

Methods
Method and method argument syntax

Calling Methods
How to call a method (or send a message to a method)

Modules and Classes
Creating modules and classes including inheritance

Exceptions
Exception handling syntax

Precedence
Precedence of ruby operators

Refinements
Use and behavior of the experimental refinements feature

Miscellaneous
alias, undef, BEGIN, END

Upvotes: 0

polygenelubricants
polygenelubricants

Reputation: 383716

Ruby 1.8 has been the subject of several industry standards. The language specifications for Ruby were developed by the Open Standards Promotion Center of the Information-Technology Promotion Agency (a Japanese government agency) for submission to the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC) and then to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It was accepted as a Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS X 3017) in 2011[24] and an international standard (ISO/IEC 30170) in 2012.[25]

References

See also

Upvotes: 11

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