Ruby way to group anagrams in string array

Question

I implemented a function to group anagrams. In a nutshell:

input: [\'cars\', \'for\', \'potatoes\', \'racs\', \'four\',\'scar\', \'creams\', scream\']

output

Answer 1

You could use the partition function instead of select, implemented in Enumerable. It splits the entries within the array according to the decision-function into two arrays.

def group_anagrams(words)
  array = []
  until words.empty? 
    word = words.first
    delta, words = words.partition { |match| word.downcase.chars.sort.join.eql?(match.downcase.chars.sort.join ) } )
    array += delta
  end
  array
end

(untested)

Answer 2

Like that:

 a = ['cars', 'for', 'potatoes', 'racs', 'four','scar', 'creams', 'scream']
 a.group_by { |element| element.downcase.chars.sort }.values

Output is:

[["cars", "racs", "scar"], ["for"], ["potatoes"], ["four"], ["creams", "scream"]]

If you want to you can turn this one-liner to a method of course.