Contrary to the date listed, the previous post about Python and dictionaries and PHP and associative arrays was written a few weeks back. I’ve since been spending more time with Ruby.

After posting that article about how tight the Python code was in order to build a string with just the right number of semicolons, I decided to see if I could do the same thing with Ruby.

This is the solution I came up with:

hash = {"server"=>"gpetrie", "database"=>"localhost", "uid"=>"sa", "pwd"=>"secret"}

hash.each do |key, val|
  if hash.length == 1
    print "#{key}=#{val}\n"
  else
    print "#{key}=#{val}; "
    hash.delete(key)
  end
end

I think I’m missing something here that would make this code much tighter. This looks very similar to the PHP code that I wrote as the solution in my previous article. There’s got to be a method that I’m not using that would allow me to dismiss the delete and the hash.length that I am using.

If you have thoughts or suggestions, hit me up on Twitter and let me know.