From: Emmanuel Touzery <emmanuel.touzery@...>
Date: 2004-01-14T21:11:52+09:00
Subject: Re: efficient way to get the first found (or a random) key/value of a large hash

Ville Aine wrote:

>David Garamond <lists@zara.6.isreserved.com> wrote in message news:<40025921.4090603@zara.6.isreserved.com>...
>  
>
>># is there a #pairs method which returns [[k1,v1], [k2,v2], ...} or
>># something similar?
>>    
>>
>Hash#to_a does just that:
>
>irb(main):003:0> {:a => 1, :b => 2}.to_a
>=> [[:a, 1], [:b, 2]]
>
>  
>
yes, but converting the whole hash to an array is inefficient (for big 
hashes), that's why he doesn't want to use this.