Question

My problem is around the fact that I cannot pass by reference in Ruby.
I have two functions searching and get_title_ids.

I have two arrays in searching

(1) title (2) href
which needs to be updated.

def searching
    title = []
    href = []
    (0..20).step(10) do |i|
        prev= title.length
        title, href = get_title_ids(i, title, href) ## <<-- Should have just done "get_title_ids(i, title, href)"
        ## something which on next iteration will increase the ids and hrefs
        puts "\nthe title lenght is #{title.length} and href length is #{href.length}\n"
        assert_operator prev,:<,title.length,"After scrolling to bottom no new jobs are getting added" 
    end
end

def get_title_ids (start_from=0, title=[], href=[])
    #Part of code which can store all links and titles of jobs displayed
    (start_from..(titles.length-1)).each do |i|
            unless titles[i].text.chomp
                title << titles[i].text.chomp
                href << titles[i].attribute("href")
            end     
        end
    end
    return [title, href] ### <<---- this is what messed it up
end

The problem is I am unable to push new elements into the arrays title and href that have been defined in searching.

Each time I call get_title_ids i do not want to gather data that I had previously gathered(hence the start_form).

My problem is not memory but time. So i am not too concerned about the data being duplicated when I call the get_title_ids function as compared to the fact that I have to waste time scrapping data that I already scrapped in the previous for loop.

So does any one know how to hack the pass by reference in Ruby.

EDIT

SO from reading the questions below turns out I dint need to perform the return from get_title_ids. And then it all worked.

Answer 1

Arrays in ruby are most certainly passed by reference (well, technically, they are passed by value, but that value is a pointer to the array). Observe:

def push_new ary
  ary << 'new element'
end

a = ['first element']
push_new a
a # => ["first element", "new element"]