How to combine overlapping time ranges (time ranges union)

Question

I have an array with several time ranges inside:

[Tue, 24 May 2011 08:00:00 CEST +02:00..Tue, 24 May 2011 13:00:00 CEST +02:00,
 Tue, 24 May 2011 16:30:00 CE         


        

Answer 1

I made a minor update to the answer from Wayne Conrad to handle edge cases involved with open-ended arrays (created with ... operator instead of .. operator).

I changed the name to merge_continuous_ranges since while ranges like 0...1 and 1..2 do not overlap, their combined ranges are continuous, so it makes sense to combine them:

def merge_continuous_ranges(ranges)
  ranges.sort_by(&:begin).inject([]) do |result, range|
    if !result.empty? && ranges_continuous?(result.last, range)
      result[0...-1] + [merge_ranges(result.last, range)]
    else
      result + [range]
    end
  end
end

def ranges_continuous?(a, b)
  a.include?(b.begin) || b.include?(a.begin) || a.end == b.begin || b.end == a.begin
end

def merge_ranges(a, b)
  range_begin = [a.begin, b.begin].min
  range_end = [a.end, b.end].max

  exclude_end = case a.end <=> b.end
  when -1
    b.exclude_end?
  when 0
    a.exclude_end? && b.exclude_end?
  when 1
    a.exclude_end?
  end

  exclude_end ? range_begin...range_end : range_begin..range_end
end