cruby_heron

Heron's Formula C-extension using the Ruby C API. This repo contains a C-extension for Ruby which contains two methods:

• verifies that a triangle is legitimate (verify_triangle)
• computes the area of a triangle using Heron's formula (heron)

Naturally all work on this was done using my personal Emacs distribution, Aether Emacs.

Compilation

This was compiled using GCC on x86_64 Mac OS X with Ruby 3.0.2 (tested with 2.6+).

1. Pull down the code from the repository.
2. Run ruby extconf.rb and it will create a Makefile.
3. Run make to generate the heron.bundle and heron.o libs. Depending on your architecture, it may generate a heron.so file.

Testing in IRB

1. Run irb
2. Once in IRB, run require_relative "./heron.bundle" and you should see true as output.

verify_triangle

To verify a triangle is legitimate, run verify_triangle(a, b, c) where a, b, and c are numeric values. Floats are accepted and ints are auto-converted.

irb(main):001:0> require_relative "./heron.bundle"
=> true
irb(main):002:0> verify_triangle(10, 30, 30)
=> true

heron

To compute the area of a triangle, run heron(a, b, c) where a, b, and c are numeric values. Once again, floats are accepted and ints are auto-converted.

irb(main):001:0> require_relative "./heron.bundle"
=> true
irb(main):002:0> heron(10, 30, 30)
=> 147.90199279785156

Additional Resources

The Definitive Guide to Ruby's C API is a great resource for Ruby's C API with lots of information and examples.

C Ruby Extension Playlist is a great collection of videos on YouTube by Sourav Goswami which runs through how to work with various types as well as some examples.