From: Mark Probert <probertm@...>
Date: 2003-01-03T12:16:29+09:00
Subject: Re: sort the hash keys


Hi.

At 12:04 PM 1/3/2003 +0900, Gavin wrote:
>On Friday, January 3, 2003, 1:52:24 PM, TOTO wrote:
>
> > How can I sort the keys of a Hash so that they can be outputed
> > according to the keys sorted order?
>
>A Hash is explicitly a non-sorted data structure.  If you just want
>the keys in sorted order, use:
>
>   hash.keys.sort
>
>Look at other methods in Hash (e.g. sort) for more info.

You can also use hash.sort directly, however, be careful.  It returns
an array of [key, value].  So to sort and iterate over the hash hash_a
do

     hash_a.each { |item|
       key = item[0]
       value = item[1]
       # do stuff ...
     }

Regards,


-mark.