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Style guide: misleading description for "Slicing with Ranges"

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
ruby
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start with the linked Style guide section, “Slicing with Ranges,” and verify the distinction between ary[0..-1] and ary using the examples in the issue. Update the guidance to distinguish copying from aliasing and state whether ary.clone, ary.dup, [*ary], or simply ary is preferred, including the noted singleton-class caveat if clone is recommended.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

In the style guide under Slicing with Ranges it's said that

[0..-1] in ary[0..-1] is redundant and simply synonymous with ary.

However, one makes a shallow copy while the other doesn't:

ary = [1, 2, 3]
with_slice = ary[0..-1]
without_slice = ary
ary[0] = :changed

# [1, 2, 3]
puts with_slice.inspect

# [:changed, 2, 3]
puts without_slice.inspect

By analogy to the Python idiom ary[:], I would guess that the "bad" form is often written specifically to make a copy rather than an alias.

I suggest that the advice be changed to say something like ary.clone, ary.dup or [*ary] is preferred (whatever is considered better style), or that simply ary is preferred if a copy isn't needed. If clone is a good alternative then it's worth adding that it isn't exactly synonymous with a full slice, since even ary.clone(freeze: false) clones the singleton class, whereas slicing doesn't.

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