From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-01-24T14:09:57+09:00
Subject: Re: turning a hash into an array

In article <401169B2.7000503@zara.6.isreserved.com>,
David Garamond  <lists@zara.6.isreserved.com> wrote:
>While reading the archives, I found out about this cool "idiom":
>
>  hash = Hash[*ary]
>
>which will turn [1,2,3,4] into {1=>2, 3=>4}. Is there anything similar 
>to do the opposite (i.e., turn {1=>2, 3=>4} into [1,2,3,4] or 
>[3,4,1,2])? I can only come up with this:
>
>  ary = Hash.to_a.flatten
>

Well this is something I didn't know about till I saw Matz mention it in 
another thread today:

irb(main):010:0> obj = {'a' => 1, 'b' => 2}
=> {"a"=>1, "b"=>2}
irb(main):011:0> Array(obj)
=> [["a", 1], ["b", 2]]

Now you could flatten it:

irb(main):012:0> Array(obj).flatten
=> ["a", 1, "b", 2]


Phil