Can I create an array in Ruby with default values?

Question

Perl is pretty nice about default values:

: jmglov@laurana; perl -e \'@foo; printf \"%d\\n\", $foo[123]\'
0
: jmglov@laurana; perl -e \'%foo; printf \"%d\\n\         


        

Answer 1

Another approach would be overriding the Array#[] method and return the default value if there is no item

class Array         
  def [](index)
     self.at(index) ? self.at(index) : 0
  end
end

and

arr = [1,2,3]
puts arr[0]  # print 1
puts arr[5]  # print 0