Splat operator in Ruby

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 08:44:56 +0000

One of the coolest things in Ruby is the splat operator (*). In short, it lets you destructure arrays into variables, for example:

a, * = *[123]
puts a.inspect # 123

You can simplify this code even further by just dropping the asterisks:

a, = [123]
puts a.inspect # 123

If you only need the tail of an array, the leading asterisk is mandatory:

*, b = [123, 321]
puts b.inspect # 321

But you can replace it with an underscore:

_, b = [123, 321]
puts b.inspect # 321

One of its core uses is grabbing both the head and tail of an array in a single expression (provided it has two or more elements, of course):

Destruct on Artem Yegorov