How to map and remove nil values in Ruby

I have a map which either changes a value or sets it to nil. I then want to remove the nil entries from the list. The list doesn't need to be kept.

This is what I currently have:

# A simple example function, which returns a value or nil
def transform(n)
rand > 0.5 ? n * 10 : nil }
end

items.map! { |x| transform(x) } # [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] => [10, nil, 30, 40, nil]
items.reject! { |x| x.nil? } # [10, nil, 30, 40, nil] => [10, 30, 40]


I'm aware I could just do a loop and conditionally collect in another array like this:

new_items = []
items.each do |x|
x = transform(x)
new_items.append(x) unless x.nil?
end
items = new_items


But it doesn't seem that idiomatic. Is there a nice way to map a function over a list, removing/excluding the nils as you go?

Ruby 2.7+

There is now!

Ruby 2.7 is introducing filter_map for this exact purpose. It's idiomatic and performant, and I'd expect it to become the norm very soon.

For example:

numbers = [1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 13]
enum.filter_map { |i| i * 2 if i.even? }
# => [4, 16, 20]

In your case, as the block evaluates to falsey, simply:

items.filter_map { |x| transform(x) }

"Ruby 2.7 adds Enumerable#filter_map" is a good read on the subject, with some performance benchmarks against some of the earlier approaches to this problem:

N = 100_000
enum = 1.upto(1_000)
Benchmark.bmbm do |x|
  x.report("select + map")  { N.times { enum.select { |i| i.even? }.map{ |i| i + 1 } } }
  x.report("map + compact") { N.times { enum.map { |i| i + 1 if i.even? }.compact } }
  x.report("filter_map")    { N.times { enum.filter_map { |i| i + 1 if i.even? } } }
end

# Rehearsal -------------------------------------------------
# select + map    8.569651   0.051319   8.620970 (  8.632449)
# map + compact   7.392666   0.133964   7.526630 (  7.538013)
# filter_map      6.923772   0.022314   6.946086 (  6.956135)
# --------------------------------------- total: 23.093686sec
# 
#                     user     system      total        real
# select + map    8.550637   0.033190   8.583827 (  8.597627)
# map + compact   7.263667   0.131180   7.394847 (  7.405570)
# filter_map      6.761388   0.018223   6.779611 (  6.790559)

Stack Overflow Q#13485468, score: 104