From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-03-23T21:30:51+09:00
Subject: Re: sort elements

Another approach:

irb(main):001:0> s = "car car ice ice house ice house tree"
=> "car car ice ice house ice house tree"
irb(main):002:0> h = Hash.new(0)
=> {}
irb(main):006:0> s.split.each {|x| h[x] += 1}
=> ["car", "car", "ice", "ice", "house", "ice", "house", "tree"]
irb(main):007:0> h
=> {"ice"=>3, "house"=>2, "car"=>2, "tree"=>1}
irb(main):008:0> h.sort_by {|k,v| -v}
=> [["ice", 3], ["house", 2], ["car", 2], ["tree", 1]]
irb(main):009:0> h.sort_by {|k,v| -v}.each {|k,v| puts "#{v} #{k}"}
3 ice
2 house
2 car
1 tree

With the uniq and the count you are traversing the array many times.

Jesus.