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

Question

When I started writing Ruby many years ago, it took me a while to understand the difference between each and map. It only got worse when I discovered all the other Enumerable an

Answer 1

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 }