From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-03-28T07:38:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Array question

On Friday, March 28, 2003, 9:31:47 AM, walter wrote:

> Any one know why Array.join can't take a code block and join that 
> value instead of what is actually in the array?  Perhaps I want to 
> join on a subfield or process the item before joining it.  Right now 
> I use collect and then join, but that just seems wasteful of memory.  


> for instance (and yes I know it is a silly example):

> list = ["A", "B", "C"]

> #I want to do this 
> puts list.join(","){|item| item.downcase}

> #but I have to do this
> puts list.collect{|item| item.downcase}.join(",")


> Am I missing something?


No, that appears to be a very sensible solution to me.  It
communicates your intentions exactly.  If you are working on a very
large array, then perhaps you might need to find a way to conserve
memory, but it shouldn't be necessary in 99% of cases: the memory used
by #collect is very temporary and will be garbage collected.

That said, the usage of #join you propose doesn't sound too bad at
all.

Gavin