All but last element of Ruby array

Another cool trick

>> *a, b = [1,2,3]
=> [1, 2, 3]
>> a
=> [1, 2]
>> b
=> 3

Out of curiosity, why don't you like a[0...-1]? You want to get a slice of the array, so the slice operator seems like the idiomatic choice.

But if you need to call this all over the place, you always have the option of adding a method with a more friendly name to the Array class, like DigitalRoss suggested. Perhaps like this:

class Array
    def drop_last
        self[0...-1]
    end
end

I do it like this:

my_array[0..-2]

Perhaps...

a = t               # => [1, 2, 3, 4]
a.first a.size - 1  # => [1, 2, 3]

or

a.take 3

or

a.first 3

or

a.pop

which will return the last and leave the array with everything before it

or make the computer work for its dinner:

a.reverse.drop(1).reverse

or

class Array
  def clip n=1
    take size - n
  end
end
a          # => [1, 2, 3, 4]
a.clip     # => [1, 2, 3]
a = a + a  # => [1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4]
a.clip 2   # => [1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2]