From: Belorion <belorion@...>
Date: 2005-06-17T01:07:12+09:00
Subject: hash of hashes by default

I want a Hash of Hashes.  Furthermore, I want it so that if a key for
the first has does not exist, the default value is a new hash.  It's
simple enough to do a has_key? on a hash to see if it already exists,
but it seems like there might be a trick to it that I'm not aware of.

So, instead of

foo = Hash.new

mylist.each do |ii|
  anotherlist.each do |jj|
    if foo.has_key?( ii )
        foo[ii][jj] = "hello world"
    else
        foo[ii] = { jj => "hello world" }
    end
  end
end

I can do:

mylist.each do |ii|
  anotherlist.each do |jj|
      foo[ii][jj] = "hello world"
end
end

Any suggestions?