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

Sometimes a for loop is just your best option

if(array.count > 0)
   first= array[0]
   #... do something with the first

   cx = array.count -2 #so we skip the last record on a 0 based array
   for x in 1..cx
     middle = array[x]
     #... do something to the middle
   end

   last = array[array.count-1]
   #... do something with the last item. 
end

I know this question was answered, but this method has no side effects, and doesn't check if the 13th, 14th, 15th.. 10thousandth, 10,001th... record is the first record, or the last.

Previous answers would have failed the assignment in any data structures class.