From: Alan Slater <alanomaly@...>
Date: 2008-10-31T02:47:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem with copying array

Highly related newbie question, please pardon the non-technical 
language.

So, arrays (even arrays of 'primitives' like strings) don't actually 
contain the objects that fill each entry, they instead (effectively) 
link to those objects. So, .delete_at and .slice! (for example) don't 
remove things from the array, they delete the objects that are being 
linked to completely.

This explains my problem (why, whenever I delete an entry from an array, 
it also deletes it from every copy of the array).

So, how could I simply remove an object from an array, without deleting 
the object itself? Something like, array_name.remove_at(x) (except 
obviously that doesn't exist).

I've been through the API and can't find anything that seems to fit. I 
tried array_name[x] = nil, but that just left an empty entry and didn't 
change the length of the array. Even that seems to change the original 
object to nil too, as following array_name[x] = nil with 
array.delete_at(x) removes the equivalent entry  from the original array 
as well.

How can I remove an entry from an array without deleting the object that 
the entry refers to?
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