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

Question

You could grab the first and last elements and process them differently, if you like.

first = array.shift
last = array.pop
process_first_one
array.each { |x| process_middle_bits }
process_last_one

If the code for the first and last iteration has nothing in common with the code for the other iterations, you could also do:

do_something( a.first )
a[1..-2].each do |x|
  do_something_else( x )
end
do_something_else_else( a.last )

If the different cases have some code in common, your way is fine.

What if you could do this?

%w(a b c d).each.with_position do |e, position|
  p [e, position]    # => ["a", :first]
                     # => ["b", :middle]
                     # => ["c", :middle]
                     # => ["d", :last]
end

Or this?

%w(a, b, c, d).each_with_index.with_position do |(e, index), position|
  p [e, index, position]    # => ["a,", 0, :first]
                            # => ["b,", 1, :middle]
                            # => ["c,", 2, :middle]
                            # => ["d", 3, :last]
end

In MRI >= 1.8.7, all it takes is this monkey-patch:

class Enumerable::Enumerator

  def with_position(&block)
    state = :init
    e = nil
    begin
      e_last = e
      e = self.next
      case state
      when :init
        state = :first
      when :first
        block.call(e_last, :first)
        state = :middle
      when :middle
        block.call(e_last, :middle)
      end
    rescue StopIteration
      case state
      when :first
        block.call(e_last, :first)
      when :middle
        block.call(e_last, :last)
      end
      return
    end while true
  end

end

It's got a little state engine because it must look ahead one iteration.

The trick is that each, each_with_index, &c. return an Enumerator if given no block. Enumerators do everything an Enumerable does and a bit more. But for us, the important thing is that we can monkey-patch Enumerator to add one more way to iterate, "wrapping" the existing iteration, whatever it is.

Or a tiny little Domain Specific Language:

a = [1, 2, 3, 4]

FirstMiddleLast.iterate(a) do
  first do |e|
    p [e, 'first']
  end
  middle do |e|
    p [e, 'middle']
  end
  last do |e|
    p [e, 'last']
  end
end

# => [1, "first"]
# => [2, "middle"]
# => [3, "middle"]
# => [4, "last"]

and the code that makes it go:

class FirstMiddleLast

  def self.iterate(array, &block)
    fml = FirstMiddleLast.new(array)
    fml.instance_eval(&block)
    fml.iterate
  end

  attr_reader :first, :middle, :last

  def initialize(array)
    @array = array
  end

  def first(&block)
    @first = block
  end

  def middle(&block)
    @middle = block
  end

  def last(&block)
    @last = block
  end

  def iterate
    @first.call(@array.first) unless @array.empty?
    if @array.size > 1
      @array[1..-2].each do |e|
        @middle.call(e)
      end
      @last.call(@array.last)
    end
  end

end

I started thinking, "if only you could pass multiple blocks to a Ruby function, then you could have a slick and easy solution to this question." Then I realized that DSL's play little tricks that are almost like passing multiple blocks.

As many have pointed out, each_with_index seems to be the key to this. I have this code block that I liked.

array.each_with_index do |item,index|
  if index == 0
    # first item
  elsif index == array.length-1
    # last item
  else
    # middle items
  end
  # all items
end

Or

array.each_with_index do |item,index|
  if index == 0
    # first item
  end
  # all items
  if index == array.length-1
    # last item
  end
end

Or by Array extensions

class Array

  def each_with_position
    array.each_with_index do |item,index|
      if index == 0
        yield item, :first
      elsif index == array.length-1
        yield item, :last
      else
        yield item, :middle
      end
    end
  end

  def each_with_index_and_position
    array.each_with_index do |item,index|
      if index == 0
        yield item, index, :first
      elsif index == array.length-1
        yield item, index, :last
      else
        yield item, index, :middle
      end
    end
  end

  def each_with_position_and_index
    array.each_with_index do |item,index|
      if index == 0
        yield item, :first, index
      elsif index == array.length-1
        yield item, :last, index
      else
        yield item, :middle, index
      end
    end
  end

end