In Ruby, the each method is an important and commonly used iterator that belongs to the Enumerable module. It is used to iterate over elements of a collection, such as an array or a hash, and execute a block of code for each element.
Here’s a basic syntax for using each:
collection.each do |element| # code to be executed for each element end
Here, collection can be an array, a range, a hash, or any other object that includes the Enumerable module. The block of code inside the do…end is executed once for each element in the collection, with the current element passed as a block parameter (in this case, element).
Here’s an example using an array:
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
numbers.each do |number|
puts "Current number is #{number}"
end This would output:
Current number is 1 Current number is 2 Current number is 3 Current number is 4 Current number is 5
You can also use each with other data structures, like hashes:
hash = { one: 1, two: 2, three: 3 }
hash.each do |key, value|
puts "Key: #{key}, Value: #{value}"
end This would output:
Key: one, Value: 1 Key: two, Value: 2 Key: three, Value: 3
The each method is versatile and can be used with various data structures, making it a fundamental part of Ruby programming for iterating over collections.
