From: GOTO Kentaro <gotoken@...>
Date: 2001-11-15T04:30:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25209] Re: Hash clone

In message "[ruby-talk:25208] Hash clone"
    on Thu, 15 Nov 2001 04:18:04 +0900,
    Niko Schwarz <niko.schwarz@gmx.net> writes:

> Hello out there,

Hello, 

> maybe you can help me out: what do I do when I want a copy of a Hash, which 
> I can modify without altering the previous one? I tried already 
> Object#clone and Object#dup, but they didnt seem to copy anything...
> my hash maps strings to arrays, which again holds integers.
> would it help if id restructure it all, so that it maps strings to integers?

Array#dup or Hash#dup does `shallow copy'.  If you would `deep copy', 
there are some solutions:

  * write a method which works as deep copy on the data structure. 
  * use marshal.

The latter can be written as follows:

  def deepcopy(obj)
    Marshal::load(Marshal::dump(obj))
  end

  h0 = {"foo" => [10,2]}
  h1 = deepcopy(h0)
  h1["foo"].push(5)
  p h1  #=> {"foo" => [10, 2, 5]}
  p h0  #=> {"foo" => [10, 2]}

-- Gotoken