I'm not very good with writing Ruby map methods - they just haven't quite sunk into my head.  It seems unnatural and awkward for me to think about creating arrays in this way.  

And these are the times in my life where I realize I'm staring at a wall that I need to overcome.  

So Stackoverflow - being the mecca of all things code-related in my opinion - allows me to post a question:

 

How would you improve this:

time =Time.now
    @time=[]@time.push((time-1.week).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-6.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-5.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-4.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-3.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-2.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-1.day).strftime("%m-%d"),(time).strftime("%m-%d"))

I'm trying out some of the suggestions below:

time =Time.now
    iterations =1000Benchmark.bm do|bm|
      bm.report do
         iterations.times do@time=7.downto(0).map {|v|(time - v.days).strftime("%m-%d")}endend
      bm.report do
       iterations.times do@time=[]@time.push((time-1.week).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-6.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-5.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-4.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-3.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-2.days).strftime("%m-%d"),(time-1.day).strftime("%m-%d"),(time).strftime("%m-%d"))endendend

       user     system      total        real

   0.350000 0.960000 1.310000 (1.310054)
   0.310000 0.840000 1.150000 (1.156484)

downto is demonstrably slower than my method.

The next test used the method:

@time=(0..7).map {|x|(time - x.days).strftime("%m-%d")}.reverse

1000 iterations

       user     system      total        real
   0.340000 0.980000 1.320000 (1.321518)
   0.300000 0.840000 1.140000 (1.149759)

5000 iterations

       user     system      total        real
   
1.720000 4.800000 6.520000 (6.545335)
1.530000 4.180000 5.710000 (5.712035)

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this without looking at both downto and map in the Ruby core, but in both cases my more elongated method of writing this responds faster than the more simplified methods (I like the answers below much more from a readability standpoint). Please shed some light on my tests if I'm doing it wrong. I expected map to blow my way out of the water.

UPDATED FOR STEFAN'S ANSWER

So I see Stefan's answer below and throw it in the tester:

       user     system      total        real

   0.040000 0.000000 0.040000 (0.035976)
   1.520000 4.180000 5.700000 (5.704401)

Holy crap! 5000 iterations and it absolutely destroys my method.

Because he accurately points out that I'm only interested in Dates, I decide to change my own method from Time.now to Date.today and test it:

       user     system      total        real

0.090000 0.000000 0.090000 (0.085940)
   0.390000 0.000000 0.390000 (0.398143)

It's somewhat weird that in the first test Stefan's method clocks in at 0.0359 and in the second clocks at 0.0859, more than double, but it's still hundredths of a second over 5000 iterations - so I think I'm deep into splitting hairs territory here.

See the original Stackoverflow thread here