From: Matthew Moss <matthew.moss.coder@...>
Date: 2006-07-07T02:18:12+09:00
Subject: Re: A newbie would like some code criticism, please...

>     There's also a pattern that often comes up for me and I would like some
> help with it...
>
> first = true
> list.each do |item|
>     if first
>         # do something special for the first case
>
>         first = false
>     else
>         # do something else for every other item
>     end
> end
>
>     Is there a better way to do this?  Perhaps some way to simply iterate
> over every element other than the first one?  Something that avoid a check
> every iteration?


I usually add a couple of methods to Array to facilitate such things,
named after funcs from my ol' ML days:

class Array
   def head
      first
   end
   def tail
      self[1..-1]
   end
end

list.head.do_something_special
list.tail.each do |item|
   item.do_something_else
end