From: Jason Voegele <jason@...>
Date: 2001-12-12T00:28:48+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28230] Re: Hash.keys Q

[snip]
>> Now options.keys returns ["Password", "Host", "Port", "Name"]
>>
>> I would expect ["Host", "Port", "Name", "Password"]
>>
>> is there an explanation for this ?
> 
> Yes: the order of hash keys is not guaranteed.  I *think* #keys
> returns the keys in the same order when called multiple times, but I'm
> not 100% sure.  In any case, that order itself cannot be predicted.
> 
> I believe various people have written various OrderedHash
> extensions... (very helpful advice, I know :-) You could search on
> <http://www.ruby-talk.org> to see if there's been discussion here.

Theres one at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubycollections/

Look for rubycollections/rbc/sorted_hash.rb under CVS.

Jason Voegele