Why is delete_at not removing elements at supplied index? - ruby

Question

I have a Worker and Job example, where each Job has an expensive/slow perform method.
If I have 10 Jobs in my #job_table I'd like to work them off in batches of 5, each within their own process.
After the 5 processes (one batch) have exited I'm trying to remove those Jobs from the #job_table with delete_at.
I'm observing something unexpected in my implementation (see code below) though:
jobs:
[#<Job:0x007fd2230082a8 #id=0>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008280 #id=1>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008258 #id=2>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008208 #id=3>,
#<Job:0x007fd2230081e0 #id=4>,
#<Job:0x007fd2230081b8 #id=5>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008190 #id=6>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008168 #id=7>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008140 #id=8>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008118 #id=9>]
This is the #job_table before the first batch is run. I see that Jobs 0-4 have run and exited successfully (omitted output here).
So I'm calling remove_batch_1 and would expect jobs 0-4 to be removed from the #job_table, but this is what I'm observing instead:
jobs:
[#<Job:0x007fd223008280 #id=1>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008208 #id=3>,
#<Job:0x007fd2230081b8 #id=5>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008168 #id=7>,
#<Job:0x007fd223008118 #id=9>]
I've logged the i parameter in the method and it returns 0-4. But it looks like delete_at is removing other jobs (0,2,4,6,8).
I also wrote another method for removing a batch remove_batch_0 which uses slice! and behaves as expected.
BATCH_SIZE = 5 || ENV['BATCH_SIZE']
class Job
def initialize(id)
#id = id
end
def perform
puts "Job #{#id}> Start!"
sleep 1
puts "Job #{#id}> End!"
end
end
class Worker
def initialize
#job_table = []
fill_job_table
work_job_table
end
def fill_job_table
10.times do |i|
#job_table << Job.new(i)
end
end
def work_job_table
until #job_table.empty?
puts "jobs: "
pp #job_table
work_batch
Process.waitall
remove_batch_1
end
end
def work_batch
i = 0
while (i < #job_table.length && i < BATCH_SIZE)
fork { #job_table[i].perform }
i += 1
end
end
def remove_batch_1
i = 0
while (i < #job_table.length && i < BATCH_SIZE)
#job_table.delete_at(i)
i += 1
end
end
def remove_batch_0
#job_table.slice!(0..BATCH_SIZE-1)
end
end
Worker.new

Answer 1

You use delete_at in a while loop. Let's see what happens:
Image you have an array [0,1,2,3,4,5] and you call:
(1..3).each { |i| array.deleted_at(i) }
In the first iteration you will delete the first element from the array, the array will look like this after this step: [1,2,3,4,5] In the next iteration you will delete the second element, what leads to [1,3,4,5]. Then you delete the third: [1,3,5]
You might want to use Array#shift instead:
def remove_batch_1
#job_table.shift(BATCH_SIZE)
end