From: Philip Hallstrom <ruby@...>
Date: 2007-07-26T04:27:18+09:00
Subject: Re: opposite of [thing].flatten

> Ruby-ists:
>
> We all know this clever idiom to turn a variable that might be an Array into
> one known to be an Array:
>
>  thing = [thing].flatten
>
> That saves a lot of if statements to permit thing's type to overload.
>
> What is the opposite (clever) operation? How to turn a list of one item into
> one item, and a list of zero items into nil, but pass thru the list of many
> items?

This almost gets there...

irb(main):006:0> [[]].first
=> []
irb(main):007:0> [["one","two"]].first
=> ["one", "two"]
irb(main):008:0> ["one"].first
=> "one"