From Ruby to Rust

Preface

Introduction

1. Who This Book Is For
2. How to Use This Book
3. What This Book Is Not
4. A Note on Editions
5. About the Author

Chapter 1: Getting Started

1. Installing Rust
2. Creating a New Project
3. The Main Function
4. println! — Rust’s puts
5. String Interpolation with format!
6. Functions
7. Chapter Exercises
8. Summary

Chapter 2: Variables, Types, and Mutability

1. let — Variable Binding
2. Type Inference and Explicit Types
3. Scalar Types
4. Constants
5. Shadowing
6. Compound Types: Tuples and Arrays
7. Chapter Exercises
8. Summary

Chapter 3: Structs, Methods, and impl Blocks

1. Defining a Struct
2. Creating Instances
3. Accessing Fields
4. Struct Update Syntax
5. Tuple Structs
6. Unit Structs
7. impl Blocks — Adding Methods
8. Associated Functions (Constructors)
9. Multiple impl Blocks
10. The Debug Trait
11. Ruby Class vs Rust Struct: Side by Side
12. Chapter Exercises
13. Summary

Chapter 4: Enums and Pattern Matching

1. Defining an Enum
2. match — Rust’s case/when
3. if let — Concise Single-Pattern Matching
4. Option — The Billion-Dollar Null Replacement
5. Result — Handling Fallible Operations
6. Pattern Matching Power Tools
7. Chapter Exercises
8. Summary

Chapter 5: Ownership and Borrowing

1. The Problem Ownership Solves
2. The Three Ownership Rules
3. Move Semantics
4. Copy Types
5. Clone — Explicit Deep Copy
6. Ownership and Functions
7. Borrowing and References
8. The Borrowing Rules
9. Dangling References
10. Slices — References to a Portion
11. Ownership in Structs
12. Ruby vs Rust: Memory Management Side by Side
13. Chapter Exercises
14. Summary

Chapter 6: Collections and Iterators

1. Vec — Rust’s Array
2. HashMap — Rust’s Hash
3. Iterators — Rust’s Enumerable
4. Collecting Results
5. Collecting into Result and Option
6. Closures
7. Real-World Iterator Example
8. Chapter Exercises
9. Summary

Chapter 7: Error Handling

1. Result — Errors as Values
2. The ? Operator — Propagate Errors Up
3. unwrap and expect
4. Handling Different Error Types
5. panic! — When Recovery Is Impossible
6. Error Handling: Ruby vs Rust
7. Chapter Exercises
8. Summary

Chapter 8: Traits and Generics

1. Defining a Trait
2. Default Trait Implementations
3. Trait Bounds and impl Trait
4. Generics — Type Parameters
5. Derive Macros — Auto-Generating Trait Implementations
6. Trait Objects — Dynamic Dispatch
7. Common Standard Library Traits
8. Traits vs Ruby Modules: Side by Side
9. Chapter Exercises
10. Summary

Chapter 9: Strings and Text

1. String and &str — Owned vs Borrowed
2. Converting Between String and &str
3. String Concatenation and format!
4. Indexing into Strings
5. Common String Operations
6. Parsing Strings into Numbers
7. Building Strings Efficiently
8. Bytes, Chars, and Grapheme Clusters
9. Regular Expressions
10. Raw String Literals
11. Ruby vs Rust: String Operations Cheat Sheet
12. Chapter Exercises
13. Summary

Chapter 10: Lifetimes

1. Why Lifetimes Exist
2. Lifetime Annotation Syntax
3. When the Compiler Needs Lifetime Annotations
4. Lifetime Elision Rules
5. Lifetimes in Structs
6. Static Lifetime
7. Lifetime Annotations in Practice
8. Ruby vs Rust: Lifetimes are Not in Ruby
9. Chapter Exercises
10. Summary

Chapter 11: Concurrency

1. Spawning Threads
2. Message Passing with Channels
3. Shared State with Arc and Mutex
4. Send and Sync — The Safety Traits
5. The Rayon Crate — Parallel Iterators
6. Concurrency Patterns: Ruby vs Rust
7. Choosing a Concurrency Approach
8. Chapter Exercises
9. Summary

Chapter 12: Modules, Crates, and Testing

1. Packages and Crates
2. Modules — Organizing Code with mod
3. Visibility with pub
4. use — Bringing Names into Scope
5. External Crates and Cargo.toml
6. Testing
7. Common Project Layout
8. Ruby vs Rust: Project Structure Side by Side
9. Chapter Exercises
10. Summary

Appendix A: The Rust Toolchain

1. rustup — The Toolchain Manager
2. Cargo Commands Reference
3. Editor Setup
4. Clippy — The Linter
5. rustfmt — The Formatter
6. Useful Crates by Category
7. Rust Documentation
8. CI Configuration (GitHub Actions)
9. Next Steps After This Book

Appendix B: Exercise Answers

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 5
5. Chapter 6
6. Chapter 7
7. Chapter 8
8. Chapter 9
9. Chapter 10
10. Chapter 11
11. Chapter 12

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Credits