Comments on: Array-ifying Values

By: Evgeniy Dolzhenko

Evgeniy Dolzhenko — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:58:08 +0000

One thing I don't like about the behavior with Hash transformed to Array is that you can't use it to “normalize” argument to an array (for example to get an API which allows passing both array of hashes and singe hash) so you have to resort to something like `[arg].flatten`.

By: phiggy

phiggy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:08:09 +0000

They differ in the nil case:

>> RUBY_DESCRIPTION # => “ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [i686-linux]“
>> [*nil] # => [nil]
>> Array(nil) # => []

By: Pablo Villalba

Pablo Villalba — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:53:46 +0000

I updated a blog post I did on the subject with links to this post, thanks!

http://blog.teambox.com/mrproper-cleaner-blocks…;

By: avdi

avdi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:48:54 +0000

Indeed. I personally feel that Array() is more intent-revealing, but [*] is certainly an alternative.

By: Bradly Feeley

Bradly Feeley — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:05:20 +0000

You can use [*items] as well to do the same thing as Array(). I don't know if there are any reasons to use one over the other, but it's an option.