Question

How do I delete the earlier array value if similar values exist? Here’s the code I use:

def address_geo
    arr = []
    arr << do if do
    arr << re if re
    arr << me if me
    arr << fa if fa
    arr << so if so
    arr << la if la
    arr.reject{|y|y==''}.join(' ')
end

Given the following values

do = 'I'
re = 'am'
me = 'a'
fa = 'good'
so = 'good'
la = 'boy'

The above method would yield:

I am a good good boy

How should I write the array merge to reject fa and just take so to yield:

I am a good boy

Many thanks!

Answer 1

You can use Array#uniq

> arr = ['good', 'good']
> arr.uniq
=> ['good']

As per @tokland’s suggestion, if you wanted to remove only consecutive duplicates, this would work (and support ruby 1.8). By building a new array using inject we can filter out each string that is either empty?, or the same as the previous string.

> %w(a good good boy).inject([]) do |mem, str|
>   mem << str if !str.empty? && mem[-1] != str
>   mem
> end
=> ['a', 'good', 'boy']