From: raja@... (Raja S.)
Date: 2000-12-09T18:10:03+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6956] parallel array traversal

Is there a way to do a parallel traversal of a group of arrays in Ruby?
Or more generally move a collection of index variables in lock-step?

Currently, in Ruby:

   for (x,y,z) in [a1, a2,a3]

has a different and vary valid semantics.     

One could get part of the behavior i'm after with

      for i in 0...a1.length
          x,y,z = a1[i], a2[i], a1[i], 

but was wondering if there was something along the lines of Common Lisp's
'loop'  where x & y move in tandem:

            (loop for x in '(1 3  5  7  9)
                  for y in '(1 9 25 49 81)
                  do (format t "~& ~d ~d" x y))

Python has come recently added the 'zip' facility.  Reasonable, but it also
creates unnecessary garbage by creating an object that in most situations gets
discarded once one is out of the loop.

Raja