Ruby: What is the easiest way to remove the first element from an array?

Question

Lets say I have an array

[0, 132, 432, 342, 234]

What is the easiest way to get rid of the first element? (0)

Answer 1

You can use Array.delete_at(0) method which will delete first element.

 x = [2,3,4,11,0]
 x.delete_at(0) unless x.empty? # [3,4,11,0]

Answer 2

This is pretty neat:

head, *tail = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
#==> head = 1, tail = [2, 3, 4, 5]

As written in the comments, there's an advantage of not mutating the original list.

Answer 3

a = [0,1,2,3]

a.drop(1)
# => [1, 2, 3] 

a
# => [0,1,2,3]

and additionally:

[0,1,2,3].drop(2)
=> [2, 3]

[0,1,2,3].drop(3)
=> [3] 

Answer 4

You can use:

 a.delete(a[0])   
 a.delete_at 0

Both can work

Answer 5

You can use:

a.slice!(0)

slice! generalizes to any index or range.

Answer 6

"pop"ing the first element of an Array is called "shift" ("unshift" being the operation of adding one element in front of the array).