From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2005-11-22T15:52:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and WMI

#Thank you, it now works, can you tell me one thing, ( I am learning)
#what does [8..-1] mean in the script "puts "\t" + mem.adsPath[8..-1]".

hope this is simple enough.

C:\family\ruby>irb --simple-prompt
>> x=[0,1,2,3,4,5]
=> [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]


here, we access normally the array x. 
the first index starts at 0.

>> x[0..1]
=> [0, 1]

we access the third (3-1) and fifth element (5-1)

>> x[2..4]
=> [2, 3, 4]

to access the element relative to the last position, prefix the index with a minus sign. But there is -0, so start w -1.

>> x[2..-1]
=> [2, 3, 4, 5]

>> x[2..-2]
=> [2, 3, 4]

it works too even if both are negative as long as start index is less than or equal to ending index

>> x[-4..-1]
=> [2, 3, 4, 5]

>> x[-2..-1]
=> [4, 5]

>> x[-1..-1]
=> [5]

>> x[-4..-4]
=> [2]

otherwise, these will return empty arrays

>> x[-1..2]
=> []

>> x[-1..-5]
=> []

>> x[-1..-4]
=> []

hth.

kind regards -botp