Expressions and Operators in Ruby

Code Implementation

Let us see an example to understand expressions and operators in Ruby.

a = 3
b = 6
c = 9

puts a + b + c
puts c - a
puts a * b
puts c / 3
puts c % a
puts c ** a
puts Math.sqrt(9)
puts 1 + 8 == 9
puts "Ruby" + " rocks!"
puts "Ruby! " * 2
puts "Ruby " + "is " + "Programmer's " + "Homie"
puts 3 << 1
puts 18 >> 1

You can also try this code with Online Ruby Compiler

Run Code

Output

18
6
18
3
0
729
3.0
true
Ruby rocks!
Ruby! Ruby! 
Ruby is Programmer's Homie
6
9

Ruby Surprises

Every language has features that trip up programmers who are new to the language. Two of Ruby's surprising features:

Strings in Ruby are mutable, which may surprise Java programmers in particular. You can use the []= operator to change the characters in a string or to insert, delete, and replace substrings. The << operator appends to a string, and the String class defines a number of other methods for modifying strings in place. String-literals in a program are not unique objects because they are mutable.

Code Implementation

s = "Coding"
s << " Ninjas."
puts s

You can also try this code with Online Ruby Compiler

Run Code

Output

Coding Ninjas.

Read about Bitwise Operators in C here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a high-level-interpreted programming language that supports a wide range of programming paradigms. It was designed with programming productivity and ease of usage in mind.

What is the difference between Statement and Expression in Ruby?

An expression is a type of statement. All expressions are statements, but not all statements are expressions. There is a difference: c if n is a statement, but (c if n) becomes an expression. The consequence is that puts(c if n) will result in SyntaxError, but puts((c if n)) will not give SyntaxError because method arguments must be expressions.

How to show Ruby's flexibility using operators?

Ruby is a flexible language since it allows users to modify its components freely. The plus (+) operator, for example, is used to execute addition. However, if you prefer to use the more readable word plus, you may add a method to Ruby's Numeric class.

What is an immutable object?

Object whose state cannot be changed after it has been created is called an immutable object. Because immutable objects' states cannot be changed, it makes no sense to duplicate the same object. In fact, with Ruby 2.3 (with frozen strings enabled), each string-literal value used in the program has its own instance.

Are strings in Ruby mutable?

In most languages, string literals are also immutable, just like numbers and symbols. In Ruby, however, all strings are mutable by default. [Immutable String-literal with Ruby 3]

Conclusion

This article extensively discussed the Expressions and Operators in Ruby. We started with a brief introduction about expressions, operators and how expressions are built out of values and operators.

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