From: Steven Demonnin <tooltime@...>
Date: 2009-06-19T07:33:47+09:00
Subject: Re: need a hash/iteration tutorial...text reading.

Matt Neuburg wrote:
> 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.
Since arrays are key/value (from what I can understand), there are only 
two part to the array.  I thought you couldn't put a third value in an 
array.

thanks for the help.   I am going to check out the web page.

(Never knew of Histogram.   Learn something new every other day or so.)
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.