From: "Pedro Côrte-Real" <pedro@...>
Date: 2006-08-22T19:22:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Why Does Hash Apparently Reorder Its Internal Representation And Other Associated Ponderings

On 8/22/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be ordered and have arbitrary key values, but it would not,
> in fact, be a Hash. That's the point that some folks have tried to
> make about this.

It is a Hash, since it provides it's interface and general performance
characteristics. It just supplies the new guarantee of insertion
ordering.

I've wanted one a few times, instead of nested arrays, mostly because
writing something like ['a' => 'b', 'c' => 'd'] would look better than
[['a','b'],['c','d']]. I'd still iterate both with somename.each{|key,
value| ...}.

I've written code where I needed both the order and the random access.
An example was a list of fields, each with an associated hash of
options. I ended up declaring an array for the fields and then a hash
of hashes to store the options. An ordered hash would have solved this
neatly.

A lot of people seem to want this so why not create a standard OHash?
A nice syntax like the [1=>2] one would be great as well.

Pedro.