Question

Somebody tell me what’s going on here:

a = [0,1,2]
a.each {|x| a[x] = a}

The result is [[...], [...], [...]]. And if I evaluate a[0] I get [[...], [...], [...]]. And if I evaluate a[0][0] I get [[...], [...], [...]] ad infinitum.

Have I created an array of infinite dimensionality? How/Why should this possibly work?

Answer 1

Basically you’ve modified every element in a to reference the list itself. The list is recursively referencing itself:

a[0] # => a
a[0][0] # => a[0], which is a
a[0][0][0] # => a[0][0], which is a[0], which is a
...

(# => is a Rubyism for “this line evaluates to”)

Depending on how you look at it it is not infinite. It’s more or less just like a piece of paper with the words “please turn over” written on both sides.

The reason that Ruby prints [...] is that it is clever enough to discover that the list is recursive, and avoids going into an infinite loop.

By the way, your usage of each is a bit non-idiomatic. each returns the list, and you usually don’t assign this return value to a variable (since you already have a variable referencing it, a in this case). In other words, your code assigns [0,1,2] to a, then loops over a (setting each element to a), then assigns a to a.