Zipping 2 arrays in ruby ​​at random places

Question

Is there an easy way to zip 2 arrays in random places and keep my original order ?

eg

a=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] b=["one","two","three","four"] 

and a random number from 0 to 5 with rand(5)

 zipped = [0,"one",1,2,3,"two",4,"three",5,6,7,8,"four",9,10] 

and the random row will be 1,3,1,4 as the place where “zip” each element b in

The best I could do is

 i=0 merged=a b.each do |x| rnd = rand(5) merged.insert(i+rnd,x) i=i+rnd end 

Answer 1

This version will give a balanced shuffle, with the inserts not tied to either end of the array.

 def ordered_random_merge(a,b) a, b = a.dup, b.dup a.map{rand(b.size+1)}.sort.reverse.each do |index| b.insert(index, a.pop) end b end 

Answer 2

Here's a variant of Mark Hubbart ’s approach in a more functional style.

MergeTuple = Struct.new: place ,: value

 def ordered_random_merge( merge_to, merge_from ) merge_from. map { |e| MergeTuple[ rand( merge_to.size+1 ), e ] }. sort_by { |mt| - mt.place }. each_with_object( merge_to.dup ) { |mt, merged| merged.insert(mt.place, mt.value) } end