From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-06-26T11:11:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Some help needed with understanding ruby hashes

On Jun 25, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Frank Church wrote:

>
> If a ruby hash rubyhash has a key such as "hashkey" is there a way of
> retrieving the value by the expression rubyhash["hashkey"] ?
>
> It only seems logical that is rubyhash.has_key?("hashkey") returns  
> true
> rubyhash["hashkey"] should return a value, but it always gives an  
> error.

What you described is the standard Ruby behavior:

$ irb
 >> hash = Hash.new
=> {}
 >> hash["some_key"]
=> nil
 >> hash["some_key"] = "I'm set now!"
=> "I'm set now!"
 >> hash.has_key? "some_key"
=> true
 >> hash["some_key"]
=> "I'm set now!"

Note how I tried that out in the irb shell.  It lets you enter Ruby  
expressions and examine their output.  This is a powerful ally when  
learning the rules of Ruby.

In short, something else is going on in your code.  Hashes work as  
you expect.

James Edward Gray II