Make all arrays (in an array) the same length

1

I have an array of arrays, the ‘inside’ arrays are of different sizes (up to a maximum of 10) (small example, array sizes 7,4,10,2 : [ [“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”],[“2”,“0”,“4”,“0”],[“0”,“0”,“0”,“3”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“4”,“0”,“0”],[“0”,“4”] ] . I need a process or method which can make all elements the same (maximum ) size while retaining the values already there, ie final result is to be sizes 10,10,10,10 : [ [“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”],[“2”,“0”,“4”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”],[“0”,“0”,“0”,“3”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“4”,“0”,“0”],[“0”,“4”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”] ]. It seems to me there should be a very simple way to do this, but I just cant find it! Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

2

You can achieve what you need with this by joining an array with the default values and then take the first 10 elements:

def normalize(input)
  empty_array = Array.new(10, "0")
  
  input.map {|array| (array + empty_array)[0..9] }
end

input = [ ["0","0","0","0","0","0","0"],["2","0","4","0"],["0","0","0","3","0","0","0","4","0","0"],["0","4"] ]
normalize(input)

By running it, you’ll get the following output:

=> [["0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0"], ["2", "0", "4", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0"], ["0", "0", "0", "3", "0", "0", "0", "4", "0", "0"], ["0", "4", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0", "0"]]
3

Thanks jvrc, that’s just what I needed!

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