Ruby Array Manipulation Examples

Explore practical examples of Ruby array manipulation for effective coding.
By Jamie

Introduction to Ruby Array Manipulation

Ruby arrays are versatile data structures that allow you to store and manipulate collections of data. Array manipulation is a fundamental skill in Ruby programming, enabling developers to manage lists of items efficiently. Below are three practical examples of Ruby array manipulation that demonstrate different techniques and use cases.

Example 1: Filtering Even Numbers from an Array

Context

Filtering is a common operation when you want to extract specific elements from an array based on a condition. In this case, we will filter out even numbers from a list of integers.

## Define an array of integers
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

## Use the select method to filter even numbers
even_numbers = numbers.select { |number| number.even? }

## Output the result
puts even_numbers.inspect  # Output: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

Notes

  • The select method iterates over the array, allowing you to specify a condition with a block. Only the elements that meet the condition are included in the new array.
  • You can also use the reject method to filter out unwanted elements, such as odd numbers.

Example 2: Transforming an Array with Mapping

Context

Mapping is useful when you need to apply a transformation to each element of an array. In this example, we will convert an array of strings to uppercase.

```ruby

Define an array of strings

fruits = [’apple’, ‘banana’, ‘cherry’]

Use the map method to transform the strings to uppercase

uppercase_fruits = fruits.map { |fruit| fruit.upcase }

Output the result

puts uppercase_fruits.inspect # Output: [