Ruby arrays are a key foundation of programming in Ruby. They are used frequently, so it is useful to know and understand the most commonly used methods.
An example of an array is shown below.
array = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"]
array.first is a property of an array in Ruby that returns the first element of an array. If the array is empty, it returns nil.
array.first accesses the first element of the array, i.e., the element at index 0.
array.first
array.first does not take any parameters.
array.first returns the first element of an array.
Note:
array.firstis not the same as thearray.first()function, which returns the firstnelements of an array.
In the example below, we create a simple array and make use of the .first property.
# creating arrayslanguagesArray = ["Ruby on Rails!", "Java", "C++", "Python", "Javascript" ]numbersArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]emptyArray = []puts "#{languagesArray.first}"puts "#{numbersArray.first}"puts "#{emptyArray.first}" # Prints nil because it is an empty array
In the code above, the emptyArray.first value is printed as nothing because does not contain any elements.