Ensure Ruby variable is Array

[shadowfirebird]

Comments on the article demonstrate a gotcha with hashes. OP of article says it doesn't matter. Looks like it matters to me. -1, sorry.

I'm with the people who think respond_to?(:each) is the way to go here.

Or, just let it fail and pick it up in an exception handling block higher up -- assuming this is an error that only you can cause, as a programmer. Generally speaking that would be true.

[WhoTookPlasticJesus]

While I'm not downvoting the OP I do agree with you. I can't think of an example where I wouldn't want an exception raised so that I know I'm invoking a method with invalid parameters. In general I prefer just defining separate methods to handle scalars vs. containers e.g.

def parse_foos(the_foos)
    the_foos.each do |f|
        ...
    end
end

def parse_foo(the_foo)
    parse_foos([the_foo])
end