ruby lets you put an array inside itself
Submitted by musou in programming
Submitted by musou in programming
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yeah! this is a good explanation of why it works. i'm mostly interested in figuring out ways to use recursive arrays that are practically useful, or at least interesting. but i still have nothing so far ._.
flabberghaster wrote
I think that it's basically a special case of how in those languages it's easy to assign a reference to things. Adding a list to itself is not really that different than assigning a reference to an object as a member of itself. For instance in python you can do:
And this creates a cyclic linked list. You could just as easily assign
a = Node(9); a.next = a
and have the graph have only one vertex. It's the same principle with adding a list to itself: you're not actually adding the list to itself; rather you're putting a reference to the container, inside the container. Like writing down the location of a bank on a slip of paper, then putting that slip of paper inside a safe deposit box stored inside the same bank.