From: David Garamond <lists@...6.isreserved.com>
Date: 2004-01-12T17:22:03+09:00
Subject: efficient way to get the first found (or a random) key/value of a large hash

# a large hash
h = { ... }

# 1. this is inefficient
first_key, first_value = h.keys[0], h.values[0]

# also, #1 is not thread-safe right?
# is there a #pairs method which returns [[k1,v1], [k2,v2], ...} or
# something similar?

# 2. will this be compatible with future ruby?
h.each_pair {|k,v| first_key, first_value = k, v; break}

-- 
dave