Ruby Object Model Diagram

How does ruby internally represent and connect classes objects superclasses etc.

Ruby object model diagram.

Hash array string integer and float. Since 11 january 2012 there is a diagram containing module inclusion links. This is not an easy task since as the author comments. You can t get very far into ruby land without hearing that phrase.

This video taken from my ruby reloaded course digs deep into what s going. There are just a few things that exist in ruby that you need to understand to really grok its object model. Using class ancestors included modules and superclass diagram the object model of these several commonly used ruby classes. You can open your irb console and see it for yourself by typing.

Object is an instance of a class in a particular moment in runtime that can have its own state and data values. When you write ruby code you are inside a main object that s why you can just write puts hello world instead of kernel puts hello world. If you re a beginner you may want to look at a tutorial instead. Everything is an object or more precisely every box is this diagram is a basicobject.

But another thing that s worth noting is ruby objects hierarchy. Since ruby 1 9 its hierarchy is like this. A diagram showing superclass and eigenclass links between ruby objects but not the module inclusion links is available at www atalon cz. Thus variables don t have a predefined type which conflicts with uml s static typed object model.

Likewise a static uml object diagram is an instance of a class diagram. So if you re a ruby programmer you probably know that everything in ruby is an object. The interesting thing is how those objects are linked together and classified. Everything is an object.

Differently from languages like java and c. Ruby s extreme decoupling and duck typing philosophy doesn t judge a class by its hierarchy. For ruby this post probably doesn t contain much new stuff for you. As part of my compiler project one of my imminent decisions is what object model to use and sine i like ruby it seemed a good time to go through ruby and look at the guts of the ruby object model if you ve dabbled in meta programming etc.

It s true though everything in ruby is an object. We now have a mental model for how ruby manages classes instances superclasses and modules but why does it matter.