Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts is a compendium of scripts that will make your life easier by saving you time and solving problems. If you find yourself wasting effort and time on a task a trained monkey could do, it's time for Ruby to come to the rescue.

Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts provides carefully selected Ruby scripts that are immediately useful. Learn how to streamline administrative tasks like renaming files, disabling processes, and changing permissions. After you get your feet wet creating basic scripts, author Steve Pugh will show you how to create powerful Web crawlers, security scripts, full-fledged libraries and applications, and much more. With each script you'll get the raw code followed by an explanation of how it really works, as well as instructions for how to run the script and suggestions for customizing it. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts will save you from the tedium of repetitive tasks and give you back the time it would take to write scripts from scratch.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 5 Ratings

Maybe it's just me - 2009-01-04
Reviewer Rating:
I'm not sure who the intended audience is for this series of books from No Starch but even a junior developer will find these books elementary. A much better choice is the Ruby Cookbook in the oreilly series. Not only is it 4 times the size but it is densely packed with code snippets that go beyond the silly "generate lotto numbers" variety of this text.

ruby scripts to solve all life's problems (well not all) - 2009-05-05
Reviewer Rating:
Thanks to No Starch Press for my review copy!

From the Description

Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts provides 58 scripts that offer quick solutions to problems like system administration, manipulating images, and managing a website. After getting your feet wet creating simple scripts to automate tasks like file compression and decompression, you'll learn how to create powerful web crawlers, security scripts, and full-fledged libraries and applications, as well as how to:

* Rename files, disable processes, change permissions, and modify users
* Manipulate strings, encrypt files, and sort efficiently
* Validate web links, check for orphan files, and generate forms
* Mass edit photos, extract image information, and create thumbnails
* Parse CSV files and scrape links, images, and pages from the Web


Ruby is a highly extendable and sometimes confusing language especially when you throw in all the various rubygems out there. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts provides many examples on how to use the various gems to script together quick hacks (wicked scripts) to various problems one may encounter.

Steve walks us through the problem we are trying to solve, the the code to solve the problem, how to run the code, what the results look like, a lengthy discussion on how it works and "hacking the script" with ideas on how to extend what we wrote. All the code is well commented (see the sample chapter on No Starch Press) and well explained.

Pros:
Easy and fun to read, font is readable, doesn't contain pages and pages of uncommented code, source code is available, companion website exists, and the book left me with memorable ways to remember and use the material. I've actually gone back a few times to look at some of the scripts in the book. I also liked the metasploit section (of course). It certainly isn't your typical "Hello World" programming book which is also refreshing.

Cons:
As one other person posted in their Amazon review, its a bit hard to say what level the book is for. Its certainly NOT for beginners as we're expected to already have ruby up and running and understand the basics and its not advanced material either. That leaves us with intermediate which is ok but certainly makes it hard to recommend for knowledgeable programmers. The book is short, its got 58 or so scripts coming in at 170 pages but it would have been nice to have more. Its certainly not "too short" but more would have been nice. I would have liked to had more information on the specific rubygems used for different scripts. Links to where to the specific gem homepages to get further usage would have been nice as well.

Functional and Wicked - 2008-12-09
Reviewer Rating:
If you are just getting into Ruby or even have been using code for sometime, this is a great book for all! It is full of a ton of useful and functional examples of code, perfect for expediting that learning curve and trying to solve that problem you've been working on for weeks.

As another user commented, it serves as a great reference book and also a fun and interesting read.

This guy knows what he's talking about - 2008-12-06
Reviewer Rating:
Lots of code examples for just about every scenario you may find yourself involved in, plus great explanations of what is happening with the code. This is not a Ruby 101 book, rather a great desk reference for the serious Ruby programmer looking for a "better way".

A must have for any dedicated Ruby coder who wants the most complete toolbox possible available to them - 2009-02-09
Reviewer Rating:
Nothing will put a coder to sleep faster than mindless tedium that their job brings. "Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts: Useful Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems" is a tech manual on the Ruby programming language and how coders can use the language to create useful programs, to help them get through the hated busywork and get to the proverbial fun part of program design and code. "Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts" is a must have for any dedicated Ruby coder who wants the most complete toolbox possible available to them.