Ruby (Rails): remove whitespace from each array item

This is what collect is for.

The following handles nil elements by leaving them alone:

yourArray.collect{ |e| e ? e.strip : e }

If there are no nil elements, you may use:

yourArray.collect(&:strip)

…which is short for:

yourArray.collect { |e| e.strip }

strip! behaves similarly, but it converts already “stripped” strings to nil:

[' a', ' b ', 'c ', 'd'].collect(&:strip!)
=> ["a", "b", "c", nil]

https://ruby-doc.org/core/Array.html#method-i-collect

https://ruby-doc.org/core/String.html#method-i-strip