Silly Ruby 1.9 trivia

  first, *, last = 1,2,3,4,5
  first  # => 1
  last   # => 5

Comments

[Dr Nic]

Cool:

>> first, *foo, last = 1,2,3,4,5
=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>> foo
=> [2, 3, 4]

[Dave Thomas]

Nic:

Works for methods, too...

irb(main):001:0> def fred(first, *, last)
irb(main):002:1> p first, last
irb(main):003:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):004:0> fred(1,2,3,4,5)
1
5

[Brennan]

def reverse(car, *cdr)
[*cdr] << car
end

(Untested)

[James Whiteman]

The splat operator really is nice -- even in 1.8

car, *cdr = ["apple", "pear", "banana"]

car
=> "apple"
cdr
=> ['pear', 'banana']

[Brennan]

Err.. meant something more like

def reverse(car, *cdr)
return [] if car == []
reverse(cdr) << car
end

but I kinda misunderstood how it works anyways. :\