From: matt_neuburg@... (Matt Neuburg)
Date: 2009-06-19T06:55:17+09:00
Subject: Re: need a hash/iteration tutorial...text reading.

Steven Demonnin <tooltime@uncletoby.net> wrote:

> What I want to know is, is it possible to create a has where the key is
> the word, and the value is the number of occurrences of the word in the
> text, and then sort the hash by the values?

That is called a "histogram" and is one of the most common examples
(Google is your friend). The sticking point here is what you mean by a
"word". If you're willing to accept a fairly crude definition of this
notion, then that is an example I develop in the Blocks section of my
Ruby tutorial chapter here:

http://www.apeth.com/ruby/02justenoughruby.html

To sort, add this line:

wds = h.sort {|x,y| x[1] <=> y[1]} 

Note that the concept "sort a hash" has no real meaning, since a hash is
not ordered. What you can do is to convert to an array and sort the
array.