Question

Is there an easy way to zip 2 arrays in random locations and keep their original order?

for example

a=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]


b=["one","two","three","four"]

and a random number from 0 to 5 with rand(5)

zipped = [0,"one",1,2,3,"two",4,"three",5,6,7,8,"four",9,10]

and the random series would be 1,3,1,4 as location to where to “zip” each element of b into a

The best I could do is

i=0
merged=a
b.each do |x|
rnd = rand(5)
merged.insert(i+rnd,x)
i=i+rnd
end

Answer 1

This version will give a balanced shuffling, with insertions not biased to either end of the array.

def ordered_random_merge(a,b)
  a, b = a.dup, b.dup
  a.map{rand(b.size+1)}.sort.reverse.each do |index|
    b.insert(index, a.pop)
  end
  b
end