The polish method is used to take a really messy array of arbitrarily complex nested items and produce a simple array of integers as a result. You can statically call this from the module, SmoothArray.polish(my_complex_array).

Flattening an arbitrarily complex list with Ruby

module SmoothArray
 
  # Sample usage:
  # require SmoothArray
  # ugly_array = [[1,2,[3]],4]
  # result = []
  # result =  SmoothArray.polish(ugly_array)
  # result.each do |i|
  #  puts i.to_s
  # end

  def self.polish(ugly_array)
    result_array = []
    process_array = [] 
    process_array.push(ugly_array) 
 
    while (process_array.size > 0)
      current_item = process_array.pop
 
      if current_item.kind_of?(Array)
        current_item.each do |nested_item|
          process_array.push(nested_item)
        end
      else
        result_array.push(current_item)
      end
    end
    
    return result_array
  end
end