From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-10-09T21:16:58+09:00
Subject: Re: strange Hash default behaviour


From: "George Ogata" <g_ogata@optushome.com.au>
>
> This seems similar to the problem with Array.new:
>
> Array.new(5, []) will put the same "[]" in each cell, so:
>
> a = Array.new(5, [])
> a[2] << 3
> a  # [[3],[3],[3],[3],[3]]
>
> If you're using 1.7?+, you can give a block to the constructor which is
> evaluated to get the value of each cell:
>
> a = Array.new(5) {[]}
> a[2] << 3
> a  # [[],[],[3],[],[]]

Very nice.  When initialising an array-of-arrays like that, I usually do (I'm
not usually a 1.7 user):

  arr = (1..N).map { [] }

> A similar thing seems to exist for Hash:
> [...]

Gavin