----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Carrera" <dcarrera / math.umd.edu>

Sigh.

Am I the only one who has a hard time browsing PickAxe?
I swear I care almost never find what I want promptly.
----------------------------

Have you ever just read the whole thing, cover to cover?  (The paper version
is nicer for that, of course.)  It makes a difference.

The book is 564 pages.  Page 277 and on are the class reference, appendices,
index, bibliography, etc.  In other words, the "book" part of the book is
really less than half of the actual book.  This might not be clear in the
online version.  I'd say just read the whole "book" part, if you haven't
already.

In my own personal experience, there are really just two places I use
anymore:  the class reference (of course) and Chapter 18:  The Ruby
Language.  Chapter 18 sums up nearly everything you could ever want to know
(at least at your rather high level of understanding) in 39 lovely pages.
(It answers this question of yours, too.)  And the next three chapters
answer you *really* deep questions, but in practice I rarely look at them.
It's all in Chapter 18.

In the online version, click on the chapter heading "The Ruby Language".

Aliasing question?  Chapter 18.
Regex question?  Chapter 18.
Keyword question?  Chapter 18.
Snoopy ($&,$!,$$) question?  Chapter 18.
/.*/ question?  Chapter 18.

So how are you supposed to know this?  I don't know.  But there is a hint at
the very beginning of Chapter 1, where the pragmatic programmers say that
*they* were using section 3 (which starts with Chapter 18) as they were
writing the rest of the book.  And they reference it over and over at the
end of the Roadmap, too.

Oh, it's a fine, fine book...

Chris