Magic First and Last Indicator in a Loop in Ruby/Rails?

Question

Ruby/Rails does lots of cool stuff when it comes to sugar for basic things, and I think there\'s a very common scenario that I was wondering if anyone has done a helper or s

Answer 1

There's no "do this the (first|last) time" syntax in Ruby. But if you're looking for succinctness, you could do this:

a.each_with_index do |x, i|
  print (i > 0 ? (i == a.length - 1 ? x*10 : x) : x+1)
end

The result is what you'd expect:

irb(main):001:0> a = Array.new(5,1)
=> [1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
irb(main):002:0> a.each_with_index do |x,i|
irb(main):003:1*   puts (i > 0 ? (i == a.length - 1 ? x*10 : x) : x+1)
irb(main):004:1> end
2
1
1
1
10