On 21.11.2006 10:16, William James wrote: > Robert Klemme wrote: >> On 21.11.2006 08:18, William James wrote: >>> Li Chen wrote: >>>> Hi all, >>>> >>>> I want to build a new array from an old one with every element being >>>> duplicated except the first and last element. And here are my codes. I >>>> wonder if this is a real Ruby way to do it. >>>>> array=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] >>> => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] >>>>> array.zip(array).flatten[1..-2] >>> => [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10] >> That's cute! I have another one with #inject (of course): >> >> irb(main):007:0> arr=(1..10).to_a >> => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] >> irb(main):008:0> copy=[] >> => [] >> irb(main):009:0> arr.inject{|a,b| copy << a << b; b} >> => 10 >> irb(main):010:0> copy >> => [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10] > > This demonstrates an excellent understanding of inject and Thank you! > is a good way to eliminate the somewhat ugly [1..-2]. Well, you can use [1...-1] instead. :-) > Here's a prolix way of avoiding array indexing while using zip: > > copy=arr.dup; copy.shift; copy.pop > arr.zip(copy).flatten.compact You can copy and reduce in one step: >> arr=(1..10).to_a => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] >> arr.zip(arr[1...-1]).flatten.compact => [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10] Or, more efficient >> arr.zip(arr[1...-1]).flatten!.compact! => [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10] Cheers robert