How to Remove Empty Strings From a Ruby Array?

In Ruby, you can remove all empty strings ("") and return a new array by using the Array#reject method, for example, like so:

strings = ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]
without_empty_strings = strings.reject { | str | str.empty? }

print without_empty_strings #=> ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
print strings #=> ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]

As you can see in the example above, this will return a new array with all the values from the original array, except empty strings (if any).

If you want to mutate the original array instead, then you can simply use Array#reject! (instead of Array#reject). For example:

strings = ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]
strings.reject! { | str | str.empty? }

print strings #=> ["foo", "bar", "baz"]

You can also shorten either of these, by using the &: syntax. For example, you can shorten the code using the Array#reject method in the following way:

strings = ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]
without_empty_strings = strings.reject(&:empty?)

print without_empty_strings #=> ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
print strings #=> ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]

This will return a new array with all the empty strings removed. Similarly, you can shorten the Array#reject! method like so:

strings = ["", "foo", "", "bar", "baz", ""]
strings.reject!(&:empty?)

print strings #=> ["foo", "bar", "baz"]

This will mutate the original array, removing all empty strings from it.