best way to remove strings in array with Ruby

Question

lets say i've got this array:

array = ["str1", "str2", "str3", "str4", "str5", "str6", "str7", "str8"]

what i'm doing:

array.delete_if {|i| i == "str1" || i == "str3" || i == "str5"}

i got:

["str2", "str4", "str6", "str7", "str8"]

are there any better approach in ruby to do this ?

Alex D · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-14 20:24:23Z

40

You could do this:

array - %w{str1 str2 str3}

Note that this returns a new array with "str1", "str2", and "str3" removed, rather than modifiying array directly (as delete_if does). You can reassign the new array to array concisely like this:

array -= %w{str1 str2 str3}

edited Sep 14, 2012 at 20:24

answered Sep 14, 2012 at 19:33

Alex D

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3 Comments

tadman Over a year ago

array -= %w[ ... ] would do an in-place reassignment but would not alter any references to the original array.

Alex D Over a year ago

Good idea; I added it to the original answer.

Cassio Cabral Over a year ago

just so people know, %w{word word2} does not accept variables containing strings. I didn't know and it will not remove the string from the array. I used array -= [variable_containing_string] to make it work

DDD · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-20 12:08:48Z

2

array.reject{|e| e=~ /str[135]/}

answered Dec 20, 2016 at 12:08

DDD

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