From: Adam Shelly <adam.shelly@...>
Date: 2008-01-23T06:18:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Question about hsh.each_pair

> I was wondering if the hash.each_pair function messes with the order of
> my hash?
>

It's not the each_pair method, it's the hash itself.  Hashes are
unordered - or more specifically, ordered by the hash value of the
key, which is unrelated to the order in which you added items.

> I am using it to parse some text and replace html entities and
> apparently it changes the order of my hash before iterating each
> pairs...
> Now obviously, the substitution needs to be done in the correct order
> (i.e. & needs to be parsed before <...)
>
> Any ideas as to why the hash seems to be re-ordered before the do block
> is executed, and how I can prevent this??

You could try a nested array instead
rep = [[ "&", "&quot;"], ["<","&lt;"] >    ...]
rep.each do |key, value|
   text.gsub(key, value)
end

or, maybe more simply:
require 'CGI'
CGI.escapeHTML(text)