Difference between map and collect in Ruby?

Question

I have Googled this and got patchy / contradictory opinions - is there actually any difference between doing a map and doing a collect on an array

Answer 1

I've been told they are the same.

Actually they are documented in the same place under ruby-doc.org:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Array.html#M000249

• ary.collect {|item| block } → new_ary
• ary.map {|item| block } → new_ary
• ary.collect → an_enumerator
• ary.map → an_enumerator

Invokes block once for each element of self. Creates a new array containing the values returned by the block. See also Enumerable#collect.
If no block is given, an enumerator is returned instead.

a = [ "a", "b", "c", "d" ]
a.collect {|x| x + "!" }   #=> ["a!", "b!", "c!", "d!"]
a                          #=> ["a", "b", "c", "d"]