Because I can’t seem to let this go, I continued to research the challenge I was dealing with a few days back where I was trying to get the cool python trick to work with Ruby hashes.

After scrubbing the Ruby documentation a more carefully, it seems that Ruby hashes and Python dictionaries are not entirely identical. Most importantly, Ruby hashes don’t have the same string methods that Python dictionaries do. Meaning: Ruby hashes and Python dictionaries, while similar, may be more of an apples and oranges sort of comparison.

With this in mind, I tried to trim up the code I wrote the last time to produce the same output. This is what I came up with:

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hash = {"server"=>"gpetrie", "database"=>"localhost", "uid"=>"sa", "pwd"=>"secret"}
arr = Array.new

hash.each do |key, val|
  arr << "#{key}=#{val}"
end

puts arr.join("; ")

What I’m doing here is forcing myself to work within the confines of the initial premiss that the values are given to me in a hash. I convert the hash to an array and then use the join method on the array to do what I want to do to get the output that I want. Semi-colon success achieved!

I think we can generally agree that this is better than the option I proposed previously:

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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

For my money, the new snippet is much more readable and is just a smidge more compact. A win on all sides.

I probably won’t be returning to this subject again in the near term (unless I find out I’m totally wrong here), but expect more Ruby focused conversation coming up regularly here while I work my way through the language.