Ruby Trying to Grasp a New Notation. (Inject(: ) Vs Select(&:Even); Why One Has &)

Ruby trying to grasp a new notation. (inject(: ) vs select(&:even?); why one has &?)

& operator in this case converts a symbol to a proc. So the code does this under the hood:

[1,2,3,4,5].select {|elem| elem.send :even? } # => [2, 4]

Implementation of inject method recognizes the need for these shortcut method specification and adds a special handling for when symbol is passes as a parameter. So, in this case, it basically does what & operator does.

why one (select) uses the & and the other one (inject) doesn't

Because nobody implemented select this way. Ruby is open-source, they may even accept your patch. Go and fix this :)

P.S.: But if it were up to me, I would instead remove inject's special handling. It feels a little bit redundant and confusing in presence of Symbol#to_proc (that's what & operator uses).

Ruby : Choosing between each, map, inject, each_with_index and each_with_object

A more tl;dr answer:

How to choose between each, map, inject, each_with_index and each_with_object?

• Use #each when you want "generic" iteration and don't care about the result. Example - you have numbers, you want to print the absolute value of each individual number:

  numbers.each { |number| puts number.abs }
  

• Use #map when you want a new list, where each element is somehow formed by transforming the original elements. Example - you have numbers, you want to get their squares:

  numbers.map { |number| number ** 2 }
  

• Use #inject when you want to somehow reduce the entire list to one single value. Example - you have numbers, you want to get their sum:

  numbers.inject(&:+)
  

• Use #each_with_index in the same situation as #each, except you also want the index with each element:

  numbers.each_with_index { |number, index| puts "Number #{number} is on #{index} position" }
  

• Uses for #each_with_object are more limited. The most common case is if you need something similar to #inject, but want a new collection (as opposed to singular value), which is not a direct mapping of the original. Example - number histogram (frequencies):

  numbers.each_with_object({}) { |number, histogram| histogram[number] = histogram[number].to_i.next }
  

what is the functionality of &: operator in ruby?

There isn't a &: operator in Ruby. What you are seeing is the & operator applied to a :symbol.

In a method argument list, the & operator takes its operand, converts it to a Proc object if it isn't already (by calling to_proc on it) and passes it to the method as if a block had been used.

my_proc = Proc.new { puts "foo" }

my_method_call(&my_proc) # is identical to:
my_method_call { puts "foo" }

So the question now becomes "What does Symbol#to_proc do?", and that's easy to see in the Rails documentation:

Turns the symbol into a simple proc, which is especially useful for enumerations. Examples:

# The same as people.collect { |p| p.name }
people.collect(&:name)

# The same as people.select { |p| p.manager? }.collect { |p| p.salary }
people.select(&:manager?).collect(&:salary)

Can you supply arguments to the map(&:method) syntax in Ruby?

You can create a simple patch on Symbol like this:

class Symbol
  def with(*args, &block)
    ->(caller, *rest) { caller.send(self, *rest, *args, &block) }
  end
end

Which will enable you to do not only this:

a = [1,3,5,7,9]
a.map(&:+.with(2))
# => [3, 5, 7, 9, 11] 

But also a lot of other cool stuff, like passing multiple parameters:

arr = ["abc", "babc", "great", "fruit"]
arr.map(&:center.with(20, '*'))
# => ["********abc*********", "********babc********", "*******great********", "*******fruit********"]
arr.map(&:[].with(1, 3))
# => ["bc", "abc", "rea", "rui"]
arr.map(&:[].with(/a(.*)/))
# => ["abc", "abc", "at", nil] 
arr.map(&:[].with(/a(.*)/, 1))
# => ["bc", "bc", "t", nil] 

And even work with inject, which passes two arguments to the block:

%w(abecd ab cd).inject(&:gsub.with('cde'))
# => "cdeeecde" 

Or something super cool as passing [shorthand] blocks to the shorthand block:

[['0', '1'], ['2', '3']].map(&:map.with(&:to_i))
# => [[0, 1], [2, 3]]
[%w(a b), %w(c d)].map(&:inject.with(&:+))
# => ["ab", "cd"] 
[(1..5), (6..10)].map(&:map.with(&:*.with(2)))
# => [[2, 4, 6, 8, 10], [12, 14, 16, 18, 20]] 

Here is a conversation I had with @ArupRakshit explaining it further:

Can you supply arguments to the map(&:method) syntax in Ruby?

---

As @amcaplan suggested in the comment below, you could create a shorter syntax, if you rename the with method to call. In this case, ruby has a built in shortcut for this special method .().

So you could use the above like this:

class Symbol
  def call(*args, &block)
    ->(caller, *rest) { caller.send(self, *rest, *args, &block) }
  end
end

a = [1,3,5,7,9]
a.map(&:+.(2))
# => [3, 5, 7, 9, 11] 

[(1..5), (6..10)].map(&:map.(&:*.(2)))
# => [[2, 4, 6, 8, 10], [12, 14, 16, 18, 20]] 

---

Here is a version using Refinements (which is less hacky than globally monkey patching Symbol):

module AmpWithArguments

  refine Symbol do
    def call(*args, &block)
      ->(caller, *rest) { caller.send(self, *rest, *args, &block) }
    end
  end

end

using AmpWithArguments

a = [1,3,5,7,9]
a.map(&:+.(2))
# => [3, 5, 7, 9, 11] 

[(1..5), (6..10)].map(&:map.(&:*.(2)))
# => [[2, 4, 6, 8, 10], [12, 14, 16, 18, 20]] 

What does &. (ampersand dot) mean in Ruby?

It is called the Safe Navigation Operator. Introduced in Ruby 2.3.0, it lets you call methods on objects without worrying that the object may be nil(Avoiding an undefined method for nil:NilClass error), similar to the try method in Rails.

So you can write

@person&.spouse&.name

instead of

@person.spouse.name if @person && @person.spouse

From the Docs:

my_object.my_method

This sends the my_method message to my_object. Any
object can be a receiver but depending on the method's visibility
sending a message may raise a NoMethodError.

You may use &. to designate a receiver, then my_method is not invoked
and the result is nil when the receiver is nil. In that case, the
arguments of my_method are not evaluated.

collection_select not inserting value from other model

I think you are doing many wrong things. By looking your other questions I saw your models. I put some important things:

class Roast < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :countries
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :countries
end

class Country < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :regions, inverse_of: :country
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :regions
  belongs_to :roast
end

class Region < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :country, inverse_of: :regions
end

In these models I didn't see the Roaster. I assume a Roast belongs_to :roaster.

So: your Roast has many countries and each country has many regions. But you are passing country names and region names in your view to the create controller. You need to pass the ids, so that you save references to these models.

You have many unnecessary field in params, and some missing ones. This is how it should be:

def roaster_params
  params.require(:roast).permit(:roaster_id, :name, :bestfor, :beans, :tastingnotes, :notes, :slug, :avatar, countries_attributes: [:id, regions_attributes: [:id]])
end

You don't need roast, roaster, country_name, region_name. You need the id of the country (and not the country_id), and the id of the region (and not the region_id)

In your form you should ask for country and region ids:

<%= countries_form.collection_select(:id, Country.all, :id, :name, :prompt => 'Select Country') %>

<%= regions_form.collection_select(:id, Region.all, :id, :name, :prompt => 'Select Region') %>

In fact this is more difficult, because a region belongs to a country, but here you are showing all regions. You should only show regions for the selected country (which is dynamic).

Ruby: Easiest Way to Filter Hash Keys?

Edit to original answer: Even though this is answer (as of the time of this comment) is the selected answer, the original version of this answer is outdated.

I'm adding an update here to help others avoid getting sidetracked by this answer like I did.

As the other answer mentions, Ruby >= 2.5 added the Hash#slice method which was previously only available in Rails.

Example:

> { one: 1, two: 2, three: 3 }.slice(:one, :two)
=> {:one=>1, :two=>2}

End of edit. What follows is the original answer which I guess will be useful if you're on Ruby < 2.5 without Rails, although I imagine that case is pretty uncommon at this point.

---

If you're using Ruby, you can use the select method. You'll need to convert the key from a Symbol to a String to do the regexp match. This will give you a new Hash with just the choices in it.

choices = params.select { |key, value| key.to_s.match(/^choice\d+/) }

or you can use delete_if and modify the existing Hash e.g.

params.delete_if { |key, value| !key.to_s.match(/choice\d+/) }

or if it is just the keys and not the values you want then you can do:

params.keys.select { |key| key.to_s.match(/^choice\d+/) }

and this will give the just an Array of the keys e.g. [:choice1, :choice2, :choice3]

What does map(&:name) mean in Ruby?

It's shorthand for tags.map(&:name.to_proc).join(' ')

If foo is an object with a to_proc method, then you can pass it to a method as &foo, which will call foo.to_proc and use that as the method's block.

The Symbol#to_proc method was originally added by ActiveSupport but has been integrated into Ruby 1.8.7. This is its implementation:

class Symbol
  def to_proc
    Proc.new do |obj, *args|
      obj.send self, *args
    end
  end
end

---

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