array_fill

• The array_fill function does not translate very well over to Ruby since Ruby arrays are structured a little differently than PHP’s. Arrays in Ruby are a simple stack of elements, and the key is determined solely by each element’s position in the stack. Because of this, we cannot fill an array starting at a specific position in the array without filling elements before that position with something.

  The closest we can get to doing something like this is to fill in these initial positions with a specified number of nil elements. It is however rare that you’ll need to do this type of operation in Ruby.

  PHP

  $result = array_fill(2, 3, 'cat');
  var_export($result);
  // => array(2 => 'cat', 3 => 'cat', 4 => 'cat')

  Ruby

  result = [nil] * 2 + ['cat'] * 3
  p result
  # => [nil, nil, 'cat', 'cat', 'cat']

  see also

  • str_repeat
  • range

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