From: Gary Wright <gwtmp01@...>
Date: 2010-09-09T08:48:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem with Hash of Arrays


On Sep 8, 2010, at 7:25 PM, Fearless Fool wrote:
> Of course, you can document the behavior and tell the user to use 
> fetch() rather than [].  But isn't it better to create a hash table that 
> doesn't have this behavior in the first place?

I don't think your question is valid. Does there need to be one *best*
way to use a Hash? A strength of Ruby's core API is that it gives you
incredible flexibility to address different situations by picking and
choosing the features you want to use.

Sometimes nil as default is best, sometimes 0, sometimes [], sometimes
the value should be stored when a key is referenced and sometimes not.

There is need to have a single Hash recipe that is the 'best'.

Gary Wright