Ruby: Array slice out of range?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello,

I am noodling with the Ruby Koans and I ran across an Array slice behavior that I just can't quite wrap my brain around:

ruby-1.9.2-p180 :102 > array = [:peanut, :butter, :and, :jelly] => [:peanut, :butter, :and, :jelly] ruby-1.9.2-p180 :103 > array[4,0] => ruby-1.9.2-p180 :104 > array[5,0] => nil

from Class: Array (Ruby 3.1.2) "Returns nil if the index (or starting index) are out of range."

I don't understand why the 4th element is an empty array, whereas the 5th element is out of range. I would expect the 4th element to be out of range as 'array' contains elements 0-3.

Can someone plz explain? Thanks! -Tk

2

You're right -- this behaviour is a bit strange, and doesn't seem to match that documentation. I was about to say this looks like a bug in Ruby, but then I checked the 3rd edition of Programming Ruby, which has this to say about the #slice method:

"Returns nil if the index of the first element selected is greater than the array size. If the start index equals the array size and a length or range parameter is given, an empty array is returned."

This matches the behaviour you see, so it seems somebody is at least aware of this, and it's perhaps even intentional. Might be worth posting the query to the Ruby mailing list, to see if anyone knows why #slice is designed this way.

Chris

3

viciousfish wrote in post #1016211:

Hello,

I am noodling with the Ruby Koans and I ran across an Array slice behavior that I just can't quite wrap my brain around:

ruby-1.9.2-p180 :102 > array = [:peanut, :butter, :and, :jelly] => [:peanut, :butter, :and, :jelly] ruby-1.9.2-p180 :103 > array[4,0] => ruby-1.9.2-p180 :104 > array[5,0] => nil

from class Array - RDoc Documentation "Returns nil if the index (or starting index) are out of range."

I don't understand why the 4th element is an empty array, whereas the 5th element is out of range. I would expect the 4th element to be out of range as 'array' contains elements 0-3.

Can someone plz explain?

Slices are different than single indexes: array[4, 0] and array[4] point to two different spots in the array, and the spot array[4,0] points to is just inbounds, while array[4] is out of bounds. See here:

4

Thanks for the link -- a very useful explanation, and I'd somehow managed to miss this point despite years of Rubying!

I wonder if it might be worth a little patch to the Ruby API docs to clarify the semantics of array range access. May take this conversation to the Ruby list.

Chris