History

Migration issues between 1.8.x and 1.9

This page lists backward-incompatible changes between the 1.8.x serie of ruby and the current 1.9.

Unfortunately, this page is new and wasn't maintained during 1.9 development. Please contribute to help migrate to 1.9.

Inheritance evaluation order

class Base
  def self.inherited(klass)
    klass.instance_variable_set(:@x, :base)
  end
end

Derived = Class.new(Base) do
  @x = :derived
end
#ruby 1.8: @x => :base
#ruby 1.9: @x => :derived

See #4273 for more details

switch case

case foo
when x: bar
end

becomes

case foo
when x then bar
end

Date#to_s doesn't rely on locales anymore

If you where relying on Date#to_s to give you a certain output, it might change now.

ruby 1.8 was taking into account the system's locale, so that Date#to_s would change apparence depending on it.

TODO: find commit ID ?

Encoding issues

Ruby 1.9 now associates encoding type to every string it handles. Since encodings can't always be converted without loosing information, ruby might raise an exception on string concatenation, or if you try to write in a file with a different encoding.

This is generally just unlocking an issue you already had in your application, but that wasn't handled properly.

References:

  • http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding_m17n

Hash#select returns a Hash

ruby 1.8:

> {:a=>1}.select{|*x| p x; true}
[:a, 1]
=> [ [:a, 1] ]

ruby 1.9:

>  {:a=>1}.select{|*x| p x; true}
[:a, 1]
=> {:a=>1}

Block parameters a block-local

If you relied on the fact that block parameters override parent variables, it might be an issue, but in general you're better off with the new behavior.

ruby 1.8:

> x = 3
 => 3 
> y = proc {|x|}
 => #<Proc:0x0000000000000000@(irb):2> 
> y.call(4)
 => nil 
> x
 => *4*

ruby 1.9:

> x = 3
 => 3 
> y = proc{|x|}
 => #<Proc:0x0000010109cb60@(irb):14> 
> y.call(4)
 => nil 
> x
 => *3*

String is not Enumerable anymore

Since String is no longer an array of bytes, you may want to iterate on bytes or characters.

ruby 1.9:

> "foo".each
NoMethodError: undefined method `each' for "foo":String
> "foo".each_char
=> #<Enumerator: "foo":each_char> 
> "foo".bytes
 => #<Enumerator: "foo":bytes>

#Hash Iteration in Ruby 1.8 vs Ruby 1.9

This works in Ruby 1.8, Ruby 1.9.1 but does _not_ work in Ruby 1.9.2

h = {'a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3}
p h
h.each_key do |k|
 p k
 if k == 'c'
  h['d'] = 4
 end
end
p h

This affects the dbi gem and so will affect all the postgresql users out there that work with Ruby ;/ - how do I set anchors in this page?

#Multilingualization (m17n) issues between Ruby 1.8 and Ruby 1.9

  • String class

    o Ruby 1.8: Array of bytes
      + include Enumerable => String can be used like an Array)
      + 'String#[0]' returns ascii code 
o Ruby 1.9: encoded characters (not Array but [] method is available)
      + String class behavior changes depending on the encoding
      + 'String#[0]' does not return ascii code (ex. use String#unpack('C*')[0], String.bytes.to_a[0])
      + not include Enumerable module (ex. String#each does not work)
      + we cannot use binary data (byte data) directly through String class
      + we have to set 'ascii-8bit' as an encoding for binary data

  • Magic comment

    o we have to write encoding (magic comment) in each script
o 'File.read' cannot read binary file anymore (Ruby 1.8 can)
o ex. instead of 's = File.read("input.dat")' 

  s = open("input.dat","rb"){|f| f.read}
  • Careful points from 1.8 to 1.9 (encoding)
    • String#[0] does not return ascii code (this does not output an error, the behavior changes)
    • Put magic comment (encoding) if there are non-ascii characters in source code (in most of the cases, an error comes)
    • Pay attention to the encoding when we use String class, binary data, regular expression
    • We cannot use Enumerable methods for a String instance

Also see: http://url.ba/invt

subtle differences in dbi between Ruby 1.9.1 and Ruby 1.9.2

  • http://dev.ywesee.com/wiki.php/Gem/Dbi

Gem compatibility

Not all rubygems are compatible with 1.9.

http://isitruby19.com/ is an effort to list all working gems, but I'm not sure if it's officially supported