Question

What’s the difference between these two statements? I use them in my rails app and to me it looks like they do the same thing

array_a = Array.new
array_b = []

Answer 1

Those two statements are functionally identical. Array.new however can take arguments and a block:

Array.new # => []
Array.new(2) # => [nil,nil]
Array.new(5,"A") # =>["A","A","A","A","A"]

a = Array.new(2,Hash.new)
a[0]['cat'] = 'feline'
a # => [{"cat"=>"feline"},{"cat"=>"feline"}]
a[1]['cat'] = 'Felix'
a # => [{"cat"=>"Felix"},{"cat"=>"Felix"}]

a = Array.new(2){Hash.new} # Multiple instances
a[0]['cat'] = 'feline'
a # =>[{"cat"=>"feline"},{}]
squares = Array.new(5){|i|i*i}
squares # => [0,1,4,9,16]

copy = Array.new(squares) # initialized by copying
squares[5] = 25
squares # => [0,1,4,9,16,25]
copy # => [0,1,4,9,16]

Note: the above examples taken from Programming Ruby 1.9