🔗 Ruby’s zip: Elegant Array Merging Made Easy

July 7, 2025

#Ruby #RubyOnRails #ProgrammingTips #CleanCode

Ever needed to combine two arrays element by element in Ruby? There’s a method for that—it’s called zip, and it’s one of my favorites for transforming structured data with elegance.

Here’s why zip is worth knowing:

Combine Arrays by Index

[1, 2, 3].zip(["a", "b", "c"])
# => [[1, "a"], [2, "b"], [3, "c"]]

Handle Uneven Arrays Gracefully

[1, 2].zip(["a", "b", "c"])
# => [[1, "a"], [2, "b"], [nil, "c"]]

Turn Arrays into Hashes

[:name, :age].zip(["Alice", 30]).to_h
# => { name: "Alice", age: 30 }

Great for Labeling Values

["hour", "minute"].zip("09:00".split(":")).to_h
# => { "hour" => "09", "minute" => "00" }

Perform Element-wise Calculations

[1, 2, 3].zip([4, 5, 6]).map { |x, y| x + y }
# => [5, 7, 9]

---

The zip method is perfect for clean, readable code when transforming or merging datasets. It’s one of those small Ruby gems that makes your code both elegant and expressive.

Have you used zip in a clever way?

Share your use case or let me know if this tip was helpful!