From: Christopher Dicely <cmdicely@...>
Date: 2008-02-10T09:59:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Recursive array bug?

On Feb 9, 2008 4:08 PM, Siep Korteling <s.korteling@gmail.com> wrote:
> Justin Collins wrote:
> > Siep Korteling wrote:
> >> error. Investigating my unflattened array I found something strange.
> >>
> >> p a[0][0][0]
> >> =>1
> >> and it keeps returning 1's as far as I can see. Is this a bug or am I
> >> just being silly?
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Siep
> >>
> >
> >
> > Does this help?
> >
> > irb(main):001:0> a = [ "array" ]
> > => ["array"]
> > irb(main):002:0> a << a
> > => ["array", [...]]
> > irb(main):003:0> a[0]   # This is Array#[]
> > => "array"
> > irb(main):004:0> a[0][0] # This is String#[]
> > => 97
> > irb(main):005:0> a[0][0][0] # This is Fixnum#[]
> > => 1
> > irb(main):006:0> a[0][0][0][0][0] # This is also Fixnum#[]
> > => 1
> >
> > -Justin
>
> Yes it does. I had to think real hard about it. With a[0][0] I expected
> to get a value from a matrix (but there is no matrix, give me the blue
> pill please), when I'm actually calling a method from a string. Why it
> returns 97 is beyond me at this moment, but it's not relevant. Duck
> typing fooled me, I guess.
>

It gets 97 because "a rose is"[0] is 97; that is, 97 is the ASCII
character code of "a":

irb(main):006:0> text = "a rose is"
=> "a rose is"
irb(main):007:0> arr = (0..(text.length-1)).map {|idx| text[idx]}
=> [97, 32, 114, 111, 115, 101, 32, 105, 115]
irb(main):008:0> new_text = arr.inject("") {|str, code| str + code.chr}
=> "a rose is"