Question

I’m trying to figure out whether I should avoid looping through arrays this way if I only want its specific sections.

the_count = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]     
fruits = ["apples", "oranges", "pears", "apricots"]

for number in the_count
  puts "This is count #{number}"
end

fruits.each do |fruit|
  puts "A fruit of type: #{fruit}"
end

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Both of the loops you describe will indeed go through all of the elements in the array. What else would they do? If you just want a single item from an array, use fruits[2], or if you want just part of the array, use fruits.slice(1,3) or fruits.slice(1..3) (the first one returns 3 elements starting from element 1 (i.e. the second one), the second returns elements 1 through 3).