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

Question

Ruby/Rails does lots of cool stuff when it comes to sugar for basic things, and I think there\'s a very common scenario that I was wondering if anyone has done a helper or s

Answer 1

I could not resist :) This is not tuned for performance although i guess it is should not be much slower than most of the other answers here. It's all about the sugar!

class Array
  class EachDSL
    attr_accessor :idx, :max

    def initialize arr
      self.max = arr.size
    end

    def pos
      idx + 1
    end

    def inside? range
      range.include? pos
    end

    def nth? i
      pos == i
    end

    def first?
      nth? 1
    end

    def middle?
      not first? and not last?
    end

    def last?
      nth? max
    end

    def inside range
      yield if inside? range
    end

    def nth i
      yield if nth? i
    end

    def first
      yield if first?
    end

    def middle
      yield if middle?
    end

    def last
      yield if last?
    end
  end

  def each2 &block
    dsl = EachDSL.new self
    each_with_index do |x,i|
      dsl.idx = i
      dsl.instance_exec x, &block
    end
  end
end

Example 1:

[1,2,3,4,5].each2 do |x|
  puts "#{x} is first"  if first?
  puts "#{x} is third"  if nth? 3
  puts "#{x} is middle" if middle?
  puts "#{x} is last"   if last?
  puts
end

# 1 is first
# 
# 2 is middle
# 
# 3 is third
# 3 is middle
# 
# 4 is middle
# 
# 5 is last

Example 2:

%w{some short simple words}.each2 do |x|
  first do
    puts "#{x} is first"
  end

  inside 2..3 do
    puts "#{x} is second or third"
  end

  middle do
    puts "#{x} is middle"
  end

  last do
    puts "#{x} is last"
  end
end

# some is first
# short is second or third
# short is middle
# simple is second or third
# simple is middle
# words is last