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End of Life Ruby 3.1 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method

Array#flatten!

array.flatten! → self or nil
array.flatten!(level) → self or nil

Replaces each nested Array in self with the elements from that Array; returns self if any changes, nil otherwise.

With non-negative Integer argument level, flattens recursively through level levels:

Example
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten!(1) # => [0, 1, [2, 3], 4, 5]
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten!(2) # => [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten!(3) # => [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[0, 1, 2].flatten!(1) # => nil

With no argument, a nil argument, or with negative argument level, flattens all levels:

Example
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten! # => [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[0, 1, 2].flatten! # => nil
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten!(-1) # => [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
a = [ 0, [ 1, [2, 3], 4 ], 5 ]
a.flatten!(-2) # => [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[0, 1, 2].flatten!(-1) # => nil
See also #flatten #hash #first #include? also in 4.1 · 4.0 · 3.4 · 3.3 · 3.2 · 3.0