Duplicating an array of strings.

Question

arr = ["red","green","yellow"]

arr2 = arr.clone
arr2[0].replace("blue")

puts arr.inspect
puts arr2.inspect

produces:

["blue", "green", "yellow"]
["blue", "green", "yellow"]

Is there anyway to do a deep copy of an array of strings, other than using Marshal as i understand that is a hack.

I could do:

arr2 = []
arr.each do |e|
  arr2 << e.clone
end

but it doesn't seem very elegant, or efficient.

Thanks

Answer 1

Your second solution can be shortened to arr2 = arr.map do |e| e.dup end (unless you actually need the behaviour of clone, it's recommended to use dup instead).

Other than that your two solutions are basically the standard solutions to perform a deep copy (though the second version is only one-level deep (i.e. if you use it on an array of arrays of strings, you can still mutate the strings)). There isn't really a nicer way.

Edit: Here's a recursive deep_dup method that works with arbitrarily nested arrays:

class Array
  def deep_dup
    map {|x| x.deep_dup}
  end
end

class Object
  def deep_dup
    dup
  end
end

class Numeric
  # We need this because number.dup throws an exception
  # We also need the same definition for Symbol, TrueClass and FalseClass
  def deep_dup
    self
  end
end

You might also want to define deep_dup for other containers (like Hash), otherwise you'll still get a shallow copy for those.

Answer 2

You can use this hack:

arr1 = %w{ red green blue }
arr2 = arr1.join("--!--").split("--!--")

But it is just for fun :)

arr2[0].replace("lol")
p arr1
#=> ["red", "green", "blue"]
p arr2
#=> ["lol", "green", "blue"]

And it will work only for 1 level arrays

Answer 3

I recommend your initial idea, but written slightly more concisely:

arr = ["red","green","yellow"]
arr2 = arr.inject([]) { |a,element| a << element.dup }