can you patiently explain what happens in this? `words_array.each do |word| word_counts[word] ||= 0 word_counts[word] += 1 end` in ruby

This piece of code is written in Ruby and it involves iterating over an array (words_array) and counting the occurrences of each word using a hash (word_counts).

Here's a breakdown of what happens in this code:

  1. words_array.each do |word| : This line starts a loop that iterates over each element (word) in the words_array.

  2. word_counts[word] ||= 0: This line initializes the value of word_counts[word] to 0 if it's not already set. It uses the ||= operator, which assigns the value 0 to word_counts[word] only if word_counts[word] is nil or false.

  3. word_counts[word] += 1: This line increments the value of word_counts[word] by 1. It keeps track of the number of occurrences of each word in the word_counts hash.

By the end of the loop, word_counts will contain the count of each word in the words_array.

For example, if words_array is ["apple", "banana", "apple", "cherry", "banana"], the resulting word_counts hash would be {"apple" => 2, "banana" => 2, "cherry" => 1}.

This code can be helpful for tasks such as word frequency analysis or generating word clouds.

related categories

gistlibby LogSnag