From: gotoken@... (GOTO Kentaro)
Date: 2001-01-04T04:34:51+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:8587] Re: bug??

In message "[ruby-talk:8580] bug??"
    on 01/01/04, Jean Michel <jmichel@schur.institut.math.jussieu.fr> writes:
>irb(main):015:0> a=Hash.new("")
>{}
>irb(main):016:0> a[1]<<"a"
>"a"
>irb(main):017:0> a[1]
>"a"
>irb(main):018:0> a
>{}

Then you can get:

irb(main):019:0> a.default
"a"

And see Hugh's answer [ruby-talk:8582].  

A number of users was confused by these behavior, thus we have already
proposed an alternative constructor [ruby-list:26622] like this:

  a = Hash.new { |hash_self, unknown_key| 
    hash_self[unknown_key] = ""
  }

  a[1] << "a"
  p a          # {1 => "a"}

I believe this feature will be adopted in the near future ;-)

-- Gotoken