hal9000 / hypermetrics.com wrote:
>Question for you all.
>
>Suppose you have an array that is growing
>more or less unpredictably. You assign an
>element that is past the current end, and
>you get several new nils as a result.
>
>My problem: I want to store zeroes, not
>nils.
>
>What I wish (though I'm not advocating an
>actual change in Ruby) is to be able to
>specify a default value for "new but un-
>assigned" elements, much as you can give
>a default value for a hash.
>
>However, I don't want to manually keep
>track of when the array gets bigger; I
>don't like the option of periodically
>scanning it from beginning to end; and
>waiting for the array to be completely
>built is not an option.
>
>How would you recommend doing this?

Create a class which inherits from Array and override []
and []= to do your checks.

I would have to work to get the syntax right though.

Cheers,
Ben
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