Reverse an array without using a loop in ruby

Question

I have a coding challenge to reverse a an array with 5 elements in it. How would I do this without using the reverse method?

Code:

def reverse(array)
 a         


        

Answer 1

You can treat array as a stack and pop the elements from the end:

def reverse(array)
  rev = []
  rev << array.pop until array.empty?
  rev
end

or if you don't like modifying objects, use more functional-like reduce:

def reverse(array)
  array.reduce([]) {|acc, x| [x] + acc}
end

Cary mentioned in the comment about the performance. The functional approach might not be the fastest way, so if you really want to do it fast, create a buffor array and just add the items from the end to begin:

def reverse(array)
  reversed = Array.new(array.count)
  array.each_with_index do |item, index|
    reversed[-(index + 1)] = item
  end
  reversed
end