Ruby 1.9 Standard Library Changes

Here's a top-level overview of some of the changes to date in the standard library that comes with Ruby 1.9. (These are the libraries that you get preinstalled with Ruby, but that you have to require into your code.)

• The base64 library has been removed. Use Array#pack and String#unpack instead.
• Much of the Complex and Rational libraries are now built in to the interpreter. However, requiring the external libraries adds additional functionally. In the case of Rational, this functionality is minimal.
• The CMath library has been added.
• The Enumerator library is now built in.
• Added Fiber library (adds coroutine support to fibers).
• Removed ftools (replaced by fileutils).
• The Generator library has been removed (use Fibers).
• Added notes on using irb from inside applications.
• jcode is removed in favor of built-in encoding support.
• The json library is added.
• The matrix library no longer requires that you include mathn.
• The mutex library is now built in.
• parsedate has been removed. The Date class handles most of its functionality.
• readbytes has been removed. IO now supports the method directly.
• require_relative added.
• Add description of Ripper.
• Add description of SecureRandom.
• I've omitted the shell library, as it seems more like a curiosity than something folks would use (and it's broken under 1.9).
• The soap library is removed.
• I've omitted the sync library. It is broken under 1.9, and the monitor library seems to be cleaner.
• Win32API is now deprecated in favor of using the DL library.

It's interesting to me just how much is still changing in Ruby 1.9. But, as I use it more and more, it's also gratifying to see how some of the new idioms make coding just that little sweeter.

I just pushed a new beta of the PickAxe Third Edition with all the library changes.