Capitalized methods names

You can define methods with capitalized names:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

def Foo
  puts 'foo'
end

def Bar x
  puts x
end

At call time, to avoid Ruby to interpret them as constants, you must make clear that you are using them as functions, by using parenthesis or parameters:

Foo()      #=> 'foo'
Bar 3      #=> 3
Foo        #=> Error: not initialized constant

Sequel uses this feature to define methods named String, Integer, etc. for creating/altering tables.

How to install sqlite3-ruby gem on linux

If you are having trouble to install the sqlite3-ruby gem, try the following:

In systems with apt-get:

# apt-get install libsqlite3-dev

In systems with yum:

# yum install sqlite-devel

How to install bson_ext gem on linux

MongoDB requires the bson_ext gem to increase performance. However, it's common to be not ready to install it.

In ubuntu (10.04 32bit) I had to run:

# apt-get install ruby1.8-dev

In systems with yum I had to run:

# yum install gcc
# yum install make
# yum install ruby-devel


Finally in both systems I could run, with no errors:

# gem install bson_ext

A little bit on require behavior

require filename will:

• return true when it finds filename;
• return false when it already loaded filename;
• raise LoadError when it doesn't find filename.

That was not properly documented; the official documentation lean us to guess it would return false when the file is not found, and that's not the case.