The Ruby C API

For the greatest chance of success with this guide, I recommend being fairly comfortable with C and very comfortable with Ruby.Using Ruby’s C API does not require any advanced C concepts, however the API is huge and largely undocumented. After you start using it, you will likely find yourself delving through the Ruby source code at some point to figure out the behavior of some obscure function or macro. The Ruby source uses some fairly sophisticated C, so you should at least feel comfortable reading it.You can think of the C API is being a big, clunky alternative to writing normal Ruby code. However the simple, elegant patterns of Ruby can be pretty unintuitive once translated into the language of the API. Having a strong intuition for Ruby’s internal logic and the ideas behind its design will go a long way toward steering you toward the correct API functions.