ActiveRecord and Forty Two

I was making a gem to have Google Spreadsheets as the backing store for an ActiveRecord adapter when I came upon this interesting method:

# Same as +first+ except returns only the fourth record.
def fourth(*args)
  @association.fourth(*args)
end

# Same as +first+ except returns only the fifth record.
def fifth(*args)
  @association.fifth(*args)
end

# Same as +first+ except returns only the forty second record.
# Also known as accessing "the reddit".
def forty_two(*args)
  @association.forty_two(*args)
end

Today I learned that ActiveRecord has methods first until fifth, and also forty_two.

It’s even in the documentation:

The methods second, third, fourth, and fifth return the corresponding element (first is built-in). Thanks to social wisdom and positive constructiveness all around, forty_two is also available.

It seems to have been added by jeremy on March 21, 2009 puportedly to “Convert array extension modules to class reopens.