came across (what i consider) a strange difference between iterating
through an array with #each and #each_index - maybe someone can explain
this?
i’m working on a baseball scorecard, that splits a string up into an
array, and then searches for keywords like “out,” “single,” “homer,”
etc. here’s a simplified example that demonstrates what is confusing to
me:
string = “Joe struck out looking blah blah Bill out at second blah blah”
array = string.split
array.each{|entry|
p array.index(entry) if entry == “out”
}
puts
array.each_index{|index|
p index if array[index] == “out”
}
i expected both ways of iterating through the array to give the same
results (2 and 7,) but they don’t - what’s returned is:
=> 2
=> 2
=> 2
=> 7
why the heck does #each return 2 twice, instead of returning 2 and 7
like #each_index does? am i missing something obvious here? thanks in
advance for any help…
On Sunday 17 July 2011 23:10:23 jake kaiden wrote:
}
why the heck does #each return 2 twice, instead of returning 2 and 7
like #each_index does?
Because Array#index returns the index of the first occurrence of the
argument,
that is always 2, regardless of the iteration. In other words,
Array#index is
not suitable to be used from within each to access the index of the
current
element. If you need both the index and the element, you can use
Array#each_with_index which passes both the element and its index to the
block.
am i missing something obvious here? thanks in
advance for any help…
The documentation clearly says that index method will return the index
of
the first match so it’s not an issue with each, it’s the way index
method
has been designed to work.
i overlooked that Array#index was always going to return the
first occurrence even if it was within an iteration…
[snip]
Be careful not to think that a method knows that it’s being used in
the context of an iteration, even if it’s a method of the same object
you’re iterating.
On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 5:03 PM, jake kaiden [email protected]
wrote:
i was indeed missing something obvious - thanks for pointing it out!
somehow i overlooked that Array#index was always going to return the
first occurrence even if it was within an iteration…
thanks again - the scorecard is coming along - go sox!
Have you been referred to #each_with_index already?
array.each{|entry, index|
p index if entry == “out”
}
This is more efficient also since #index has to search the Array from
the beginning.
i was indeed missing something obvious - thanks for pointing it out!
somehow i overlooked that Array#index was always going to return the
first occurrence even if it was within an iteration…
thanks again - the scorecard is coming along - go sox!
I don’t know, I can’t stop my habit of using ruby-doc.org as my #1
source although it falls short every now and then. I’ve been pointed to
other sites already but come back to this one always, it feels somehow
“official” although my understanding is it isn’t (and that there is
none).
Something I think the PHP and Python projects got better … arrrrr,
offtopic.
I don’t know, I can’t stop my habit of using ruby-doc.org as my #1
source although it falls short every now and then. I’ve been pointed
to other sites already but come back to this one always, it feels
somehow “official” although my understanding is it isn’t (and that
there is none).
