From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2007-04-14T04:12:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Combining Hash elements to produce single line output

On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 03:30:05AM +0900, Paul wrote:
> tmp_hash =
> [["foo:1", "123"],
>  ["foo:2", "abc"],
>  ["bar:1", "456"],
>  ["bar:2", "xyz"]]
> 
> Desired Output:
> ---
> "foo" "123" "abc"
> "bar" "456" "xyz"
> ---

# This is a hash which auto-creates non-existing members as an empty array
new_hash = Hash.new { |h,k| h[k] = [] }

tmp_hash.each do |key, value|
  key, rest = key.split(':', 2)
  new_hash[key] << value
end

new_hash.each do |key, values|
  puts '"' + ([key] + values).join('" "') + '"'
end