How can I transpose different sized ruby arrays?

Question

I have an array:

arr=[[1,2,3],[4,5],[6]],

I have the following code:

arr.transpose 

but it doesn\'t work,

Answer 1

If the length of the subarrays don’t match, an IndexError is raised.

irb(main):002:0> arr=[[1,2,3],[4,5],[6]]
=> [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5], [6]]
irb(main):003:0> arr.transpose
IndexError: element size differs (2 should be 3)
    from (irb):3:in `transpose'
    from (irb):3
    from /Users/liuxingqi/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'

should be:

irb(main):004:0> arr=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]
=> [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]
irb(main):005:0> arr.transpose
=> [[1, 4], [2, 5], [3, 6]]

or

irb(main):006:0> arr=[[1,2],[3,4],[5,6]]
=> [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]
irb(main):007:0> arr.transpose
=> [[1, 3, 5], [2, 4, 6]]

Answer 2

Using zip as in Stefan's answer is the most straightforward, but if you insist on using transpose, then:

l = arr.map(&:length).max
arr.map{|e| e.values_at(0...l)}.transpose
# => [[1, 4, 6], [2, 5, nil], [3, nil, nil]]

Or without using either:

Array.new(arr.map(&:length).max){|i| arr.map{|e| e[i]}}
# => [[1, 4, 6], [2, 5, nil], [3, nil, nil]]

Answer 3

A similar answer was posted (but deleted) an hour earlier:

arr = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5], [6]]

arr[0].zip(*arr[1..-1])
#=> [[1, 4, 6], [2, 5, nil], [3, nil, nil]]

The above is equivalent to:

[1, 2, 3].zip([4, 5], [6])

This approach assumes that your first sub-array is always the longest. Otherwise the result will be truncated:

arr = [[1, 2], [3, 4, 5], [6]]

arr[0].zip(*arr[1..-1])
#=> [[1, 3, 6], [2, 4, nil]]  missing: [nil, 5, nil]