From: Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak@...>
Date: 2002-09-21T07:26:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Checking hash key's and values, with case insensitivity

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 00:32:27 +0900, Dossy <dossy@panoptic.com> pisze:

> If you're looking for case insensitive hashes you're already going
> to hell.

Nope. But apart from the evil $= I'm afraid Ruby doesn't provide a way
to use different equality and hashing functions in a particular hash,
other than wrapping keys in different objects.

Usually an alternative hash and equality are made by composing
a particular function with standard hash and equality. So it would
be nice to have a shortcut for that:
    Hash.new ('by' => proc {|s| s.downcase})
It would store keys as they were given and look them up downcased.

It looks a bit ugly because Ruby has only one block per method (and the
block for Hash.new is already used), and there is no nicer substitute
for keyword arguments, and a proc which calls a given method must be
written in full that long. In my language it will look like this:
    dict (by: 'downcase)

I haven't encountered any other need for that than case insensitive
strings though.

-- 
  __("<      Marcin Kowalczyk
  \__/     qrczak@knm.org.pl
   ^^    http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/