Merge Ruby arrays - ruby

Question

I have a few arrays of Ruby objects of class UserInfo:
class UserInfo
attr_accessor :name, :title, :age
end
How can I merge these arrays into one array? A user is identified by its name, so I want no duplicate names. If name, title, age, etc. are equal I'd like to have 1 entry in the new array. If names are the same, but any of the other details differ I probably want those 2 users in a different array to manually fix the errors.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Redefine equality comparison on your object, and you can get rid of actual duplicates quickly with Array#uniq
class UserInfo
attr_accessor :name, :title, :age
def == other
name==other.name and title==other.title and age==other.age
end
end
# assuming a and b are arrays of UserInfo objects
c = a | b
# c will only contain one of each UserInfo
Then you can sort by name and look for name-only duplicates
d = c.sort{ |p,q| p.name <=> q.name } #sort by name
name = ""
e = []
d.each do |item|
if item.name == name
e[-1] = [e[-1],item].flatten
else
e << item
end
end

Answer 2

A year ago I monkey patched a kind of cryptic instance_variables_compare on Object. I guess you could use that.
class Object
def instance_variables_compare(o)
Hash[*self.instance_variables.map {|v|
self.instance_variable_get(v)!=o.instance_variable_get(v) ?
[v,o.instance_variable_get(v)] : []}.flatten]
end
end
A cheesy example
require 'Date'
class Cheese
attr_accessor :name, :weight, :expire_date
def initialize(name, weight, expire_date)
#name, #weight, #expire_date = name, weight, expire_date
end
end
stilton=Cheese.new('Stilton', 250, Date.parse("2010-12-02"))
gorgonzola=Cheese.new('Gorgonzola', 250, Date.parse("2010-12-17"))
irb is my weapon of choice
>> stilton.instance_variables_compare(gorgonzola)
=> {"#name"=>"Gorgonzola", "#expire_date"=>#<Date: 4910305/2,0,2299161>}
>> gorgonzola.instance_variables_compare(stilton)
=> {"#name"=>"Stilton", "#expire_date"=>#<Date: 4910275/2,0,2299161>}
>> stilton.expire_date=gorgonzola.expire_date
=> #<Date: 4910305/2,0,2299161>
>> stilton.instance_variables_compare(gorgonzola)
=> {"#name"=>"Gorgonzola"}
>> stilton.instance_variables_compare(stilton)
=> {}
As you can see the instance_variables_compare returns an empty Hash if the two objects has the same content.
An array of cheese
stilton2=Cheese.new('Stilton', 210, Date.parse("2010-12-02"))
gorgonzola2=Cheese.new('Gorgonzola', 250, Date.parse("2010-12-17"))
arr=[]<<stilton<<stilton2<<gorgonzola<<gorgonzola2
One hash without problems and one with
h={}
problems=Hash.new([])
arr.each {|c|
if h.has_key?(c.name)
if problems.has_key?(c.name)
problems[c.name]=problems[c.name]<<c
elsif h[c.name].instance_variables_compare(c) != {}
problems[c.name]=problems[c.name]<<c<<h[c.name]
h.delete(c.name)
end
else
h[c.name]=c
end
}
Now the Hash h contains the objects without merging problems and the problems hash contains those that has instance variables that differs.
>> h
=> {"Gorgonzola"=>#<Cheese:0xb375e8 #name="Gorgonzola", #weight=250, #expire_date=#<Date: 2010-12-17 (4911095/2,0,2299161)>>}
>> problems
=> {"Stilton"=>[#<Cheese:0xf54c30 #name="Stilton", #weight=210, #expire_date=#<Date: 2010-12-02 (4911065/2,0,2299161)>>, #<Cheese:0xfdeca8 #name="Stilton", #weight=250,#expire_date=#<Date: 2010-12-02 (4911065/2,0,2299161)>>]}
As far as I can see you will not have to modify this code at all to support an array of UserInfo objects.
It would most probably be much faster to compare the properties directly or with a override of ==. This is how you override ==
def ==(other)
return self.weight == other.weight && self.expire_date == other.expire_date
end
and the loop changes into this
arr.each {|c|
if h.has_key?(c.name)
if problems.has_key?(c.name)
problems[c.name]=problems[c.name]<<c
elsif h[c.name] != c
problems[c.name]=problems[c.name]<<c<<h[c.name]
h.delete(c.name)
end
else
h[c.name]=c
end
}
Finally you might want to convert the Hash back to an Array
result = h.values

Answer 3

Here's another potential way. If you have a way of identifying each UserInfo, say a to_str method that prints out the values:
def to_str()
return "#{#name}:#{#title}:#{#age}"
end
You can use inject and a hash
all_users = a + b # collection of users to "merge"
res = all_users.inject({})do |h,v|
h[v.to_str] = v #save the value indexed on the string output
h # return h for the next iteration
end
merged = res.values #the unique users