PHP is in widespread use for web applications, but if you want to useRuby on Rails or just want a language that’s more tailored for generaluse, Ruby is worth a look.

Similarities

As in PHP, in Ruby…

• Ruby is dynamically typed, like in PHP, so you don’t need to worryabout having to declare variables.
• There are classes, and you can control access to them like in PHP 5(public,protected andprivate).
• Some variables start with $, like in PHP (but not all).
• There’seval, too.
• You can use string interpolation. Instead of doing"$foo is a $bar",you can do"#{foo} is a #{bar}"—like in PHP, this doesn’t apply forsingle-quoted strings.
• There’s heredocs.
• Ruby has exceptions, like PHP 5.
• There’s a fairly large standard library.
• Arrays and hashes work like expected, if you exchangearray() for{ and}:array('a' => 'b') becomes{'a' => 'b'}.
• true andfalse behave like in PHP, butnull is callednil.

Differences

Unlike in PHP, in Ruby…

• There’s strong typing. You’ll need to callto_s,to_i etc. toconvert between strings, integers and so on, instead of relying on thelanguage to do it.
• Strings, numbers, arrays, hashes, etc. are objects. Instead of callingabs(-1) it’s -1.abs.
• Parentheses are optional in method calls, except to clarify whichparameters go to which method calls.
• The standard library and extensions are organized in modules and classes.
• Reflection is an inherent capability of objects, you don’t need to useReflection classes like in PHP 5.
• Variables are references.
• There’s noabstract classes orinterfaces.
• Hashes and arrays are not interchangeable.
• Onlyfalse andnil are false:0,array() and"" are all truein conditionals.
• Almost everything is a method call, evenraise (throw in PHP).

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