11 February 2018
4 min read

Ruby Versions

This is a reminder of how Ruby evolves through time.

1.8

• Consider this version our starting point

1.9

• From MRI to YARV
• Splat any args
• Enumerators
• New Hash syntax for Symbol keys {key: 'value'}
• Hashes preserve insertion order
• Single character strings are not ASCII values ?c != 'c'.ord
• Kernel#require_relative
• String#prepend
• String#clear
• IO.write/binwrite/binread
• Numeric#step

2.0

• Keyword arguments
• Extend class with Module#prepend
• UTF-8 as default encoding #6679
• Convert to Hash with #to_h #6276
• Onigmo replaces Oniguruma #5820
• Kernel#__dir__ #3346
• String#lines/chars/codepoints/bytes returns Array instead of Enumerator #6670

2.1

• VM (method cache)
• Generational GC
• Bignum with GMP #8796
• String#scrub #8414
• Numeric#bit_length #8700
• Module#prepend/include are public #8846

2.2

• nil, true and false objects are frozen #8923
• Symbol GC #9634

2.3

• Frozen string literals #11473
• String#+@/-@ to get mutable and frozen strings, respectively #11782
• obj&.foo safe navigation operator #11537
• Array/Hash/Struct#dig #11643 #11688
• Array#bsearch_index #10730
• Experimental RubyVM::InstructionSequence#to_binary and RubyVM::InstructionSequence.load_from_binary #11788

2.4

• Unify Fixnum and Bignum into Integer #12005
• Integer/Float#ceil/floor/truncate with optional digits #12245
• Integer#digits to extract columns of place-value notation #12447
• Integer#round with half option, default behavior is round-up #12548 #12958
  • Half option can be: :even, :up, and :down #12953
• Array#max/min do not create temporary arrays under certain conditions #12172
• Regexp#match? does not change global variables #8110
• Comparable#clamp #10594
• IO#gets/readline/each_line/readlines/foreach, String#each_line/lines, StringIO#gets/readline/each_line/readlines with chomp option #12553
• String.new with :capacity to preallocate size #12024
• String#unpack1 #12752

2.5

• Kernel#yield_self #6721
• String#delete_prefix/delete_suffix #12694 #13665
• Array#prepend/append as aliases of Array#unshift/push #12746
• rescue/else/ensure in do/end blocks #12906
• Dir.children/each_child #11302
• Integer.pow(a, b) #12508

2.6

• Initial implementation of a JIT compiler #14235
  • MJIT: A Method Based Just-in-time Compiler for Ruby
• Endless Ranges (1..) and (1...) #12912
• Array#union/difference #14097
• Dir#each_child/children #13969
• Random.bytes #4938
• Binding#source_location #14230
• Kernel#system raise with :exception option #14386
• Kernel.then as alias to Kernel.yield_self #14594
• String#split yields to block if given #4780
• File#read/binread/write/binwrite/foreach/readlines without pipes #14245

2.7

• Experimental numbered parameter #4475
• Experimental pattern matching #14912
• Beginless Ranges (..1) and (...1) #14799
• Enumerable#tally #11076
• Integer#[] now supports range operation #8842
• Syntactic sugar argument forwarding def foo(*) bar.foo(*) end #16253
• Enumerable#filter_map #15323
• Array#intersection #16155

3.0

• Ruby 3x3: Matz, Koichi, and Tenderlove on the future of Ruby Performance
• Experimental Ractors
• Experimental endless method definition def square(x) = x * x #16746
• Hash#except #15822

3.1

• YJIT: New experimental in-process JIT compiler #18229
• Array#intersect? #15198
• Anonymous block argument def foo(&) bar(&) end #11256
• Omit values in Hash literals and keyword arguments #14579

3.2

• Anonymous rest and keyword rest arguments #18351
  • def foo(*) bar(*) end
  • def baz(**) quux(**) end
• Enumerator#product #18685
• Data class as immutable Struct #16122
• YJIT no longer experimental

More Information

• Ruby Changes