In true Ruby fashion, there are all sorts of ways to exclude values from an array.
If you just want to exclude nil values, you can use
#compact.
> [1,nil,:what,4].compact
#=> [1, :what, 4]If you want to exclude nil values and some other named value, you could use
#filter or
#reject.
> [1,nil,:what,4].filter { |val| !val.nil? && val != :what }
#=> [1, 4]
> [1,nil,:what,4].reject { |val| val.nil? || val == :what }
#=> [1, 4]The filter is clumsy and heavy-handed for this sort of example. A really terse
way of doing the same thing is with set difference:
#-.
> [1,nil,:what,nil,5] - [:what,nil]
#=> [1, 5]Or the spelled out
#difference
method.
> [1,nil,:what,nil,5].difference([:what,nil])
#=> [1, 5]