The 2.5 series of Ruby first saw the light on October 10th, as part of the first preview release toward Ruby 2.5.0. Just a couple of months later, on Christmas day (a popular release date on the Ruby releases calendar), the first stable version of the series was born.

Reflected on the release notes, we can find a whole bunch of features, changes and performance improvements which found their way to the final release. On this post, I’d like to do a quick rundown of the features that I’ve found most interesting.

Hash#slice

For a long time, Ruby has had built-in support for slicing strings and arrays. The Rails library, ActiveSupport, took this one step further, and extended slicing to hashes.

On that same note, Ruby 2.5.0 is now providing a way for the programmers to choose the keys of a hash they’re interested in (in fact, the proposed name for the method was choice to start with).

Given a hash, slice will generate a new hash containing only the keys which were specified in the arguments section.

On Ruby 2.4.3:

irb(main):> "this is a string".slice("is a")
=> "is a"

irb(main):> ["this", "is", "an", "array"].slice(3)
=> "array"

irb(main):> { a: "this", b: "is", c: "a", d: "hash" }.slice(:c, :d)
NoMethodError: undefined method `slice' for {:a=>"this", :b=>"is", :c=>"a", :d=>"hash"}:Hash
  from (irb):3
  from /Users/me/.rubies/ruby-2.4.3/bin/irb:11:in `<main>''

On Ruby 2.5.0:

irb(main):> { a: "this", b: "is", c: "a", d: "hash" }.slice(:c, :d)
=> {:c=>"a", :d=>"hash"}

Hash#transform_keys

As part of Ruby 2.4, Hash#transform_values was introduced. This useful method allows us to transform the values in our hash with the results of running a block once for every value.

On Ruby 2.4.3:

irb(main):> { a: "hello", b: "world" }.transform_values {|v| v.upcase }
=> {:a=>"HELLO", :b=>"WORLD"}

irb(main):> { a: "hello", b: "world" }.transform_values(&:upcase)
=> {:a=>"HELLO", :b=>"WORLD"}

In a similar fashion to Hash#slice, the presence of a transform_keys alternative on Rails seems to have triggered this new proposal.

Hash#transform_keys works the same way, only that it affects hash keys instead of values. A new hash will be returned with the results of running the provided block once for every key.

On Ruby 2.5.0:

irb(main):> { a: "hello", b: "world" }.transform_keys {|k| k.to_s }
=> {"a"=>"hello", "b"=>"world"}

irb(main):> { a: "hello", b: "world" }.transform_keys(&:upcase)
=> {:A=>"hello", :B=>"world"}

Pattern argument on Enumerable methods

An interesting addition in Ruby 2.5.0, is that the Enumerable module methods we all know and love, such as any?, all?, none? and one?, now accept a pattern argument.

This behavior was already present on the grep function, so it made sense to extend it to other Enumerable methods as well.

Let’s take a look at an example to see how it works.

irb(main):> words = ["hello", "fellow", "bye"]
=> ["hello", "fellow", "bye"]

irb(main):> words.any?(/ello/)
=> true
irb(main):> words.all?(/ello/)
=> false
irb(main):> words.one?(/ello/)
=> false
irb(main):> words.one?(/ye/)
=> true
irb(main):> words.none?(/ye/)
=> false
irb(main):> words.all?(/e/)
=> true

If a single pattern argument is provided, the method runs pattern === element for every collection member. The result will of course depend on the method being used.

On the previous examples, we are matching different regular expression patterns against each of the strings in our words array. But, what else can we match?

Here are some examples:

irb(main):> [1, 2, 3].all?(Numeric)
=> true
irb(main):> [1, 3.14, 42].none?(Float)
=> false
irb(main):> ["Hi", "there", 2].any?(String)
=> true

Given that === is implemented on a per class basis, we can get different behavior when using it with, for instance, Classes or Regexps.

Here, you’ll find more information on the case equality operator ===.

Reverse backtrace

This feature, labeled as experimental on the release notes, has the potential to save you tons of scrolling at the time of inspecting logs or reading error backtraces.

As a Rails developer, I’m used to long backtraces. Given that we tend to read these from bottom to top, it sometimes means that we end up scrolling a lot just to reach the error message we were looking for.

Of course, this wouldn’t be as helpful in the case of short backtraces, but I guess it shouldn’t be a negative change if that’s your normal scenario.

I’m stating it’s experimental status, given that it currently works only for TTY, and it’s actual user experience benefits are widely discussed.

As a way to illustrate the new format, here are a couple of examples:

On Ruby 2.4.3:

irb(main):> raise "Something went wrong!"
RuntimeError: Something went wrong!
        from (irb):1
        from /Users/me/.rubies/ruby-2.4.3/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'

On Ruby 2.5.0:

irb(main):> raise "Something went wrong!"
Traceback (most recent call last):
        2: from /Users/me/.rubies/ruby-2.5.0/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'
        1: from (irb):3
RuntimeError (Something went wrong!)

PP by default

The PP Ruby module, is a very popular pretty-printer for Ruby objects. Up until now, using it to print nicely formatted objects enforced you to require the module: require 'pp'

It seems that people got a bit tired of requiring pp all over the place, and ended up proposing its inclusion on the Kernel module.

On Ruby 2.4.3:

irb(main):> cart = [{ items: ["tomato", "banana", "mango"], total: 200 }, { shipping_options: ["two_day", "one_day"]}, { payment_method
s: ["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]
=> [{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200}, {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]}, {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]

irb(main):> pp cart
NoMethodError: undefined method `pp' for main:Object
Did you mean?  p
        from (irb):11
        from /Users/me/.rubies/ruby-2.4.3/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'

irb(main):> require 'pp'
irb(main):> pp cart

[{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200},
 {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]},
 {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]
=> [{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200}, {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]}, {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]

On Ruby 2.5.0:

irb(main):> cart = [{ items: ["tomato", "banana", "mango"], total: 200 }, { shipping_options: ["two_day", "one_day"]}, { payment_method
s: ["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]
=> [{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200}, {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]}, {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]

irb(main):> pp cart

[{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200},
 {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]},
 {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]
=> [{:items=>["tomato", "banana", "mango"], :total=>200}, {:shipping_options=>["two_day", "one_day"]}, {:payment_methods=>["Cash", "Credit Card"]}]

Bottom line

In this rundown, we did a quick tour of some of the new features in Ruby 2.5.0.

In particular, I’m a fan of the little method additions and enhancements, such as slice and pattern matching on Enumerable sequence predicates. Also, the reverse backtrace printing looks promising. I hope it doesn’t end up being just an experimental and temporary thing.

What are the features or improvements which caught your attention the most?

Please let me know in the comments section!