From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2011-12-06T08:58:52+09:00
Subject: Re: black magical hash element vivification

--f46d04428ee299d04304b3611955
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

2011/12/5 Jes=FAs Gabriel y Gal=E1n <jgabrielygalan@gmail.com>

> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Chad Perrin <code@apotheon.net> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 01:40:17AM +0900, Jes=FAs Gabriel y Gal=E1n wro=
te:
> >>
> >> Using that Hash constructor, what you pass is the default value for a
> >> missing key. What this means is that the hash will return that object
> >> to any call in which the key is not found. *But* it won't assign that
> >> default object to the key. You have to do that yourself. The other
> >> effect you are seeing is that the default object is returned for all
> >> missing keys, hence the {2 =3D> true} for foo[2].
> >
> > I find it rather surprising that assignment does not create something n=
ew
> > where the default used to appear, and kind of useless in this context. =
 I
> > know it's a special case of assignment that causes this to occur, now
> > that I think about it after reading replies to my original email, but i=
t
> > seems like a strange way to implement things from a language user
> > perspective.
> >
> > Thanks to everybody who responded.
>
> I think the surprise comes from the fact that you are using a mutable
> object, or at least an object that only makes sense when modified.
> There are some cases where it makes sense to have a default value that
> doesn't imply assigning it to the missing key. For example, say you
> have an histogram hash, and want to calculate the average of a certain
> set of values:
>
> histogram =3D Hash.new(0)
> #fill the hash
> possible_keys =3D [:a, :b, :c, :d] # some of them might not be in the
> histogram:
>
> average =3D (possible_keys.inject(0) {|total, element| total +
> histogram[element]} ) * 1.0 / possible_keys.length
>
> Here it totally makes sense to have 0 as the default value, and not
> have all possible_keys assigned in the hash when you are calculating
> an average for a set of keys that might or might not be in the hash.
>
> I think that allowing this version of the constructor along with the
> one where you have full control of what to do on a missing key, gives
> you all the flexibility for a lot of use cases.
>
> By the way, for the histogram case above, when you are counting
> things, you also take advantage of 0 being the default value like
> this:
>
> histogram[key] +=3D 1
>
> Jesus.
>
>
You can get that behaviour with Hash.new { 0 }, too.

--f46d04428ee299d04304b3611955--