From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2004-02-15T05:14:56+09:00
Subject: Hash like JS Hash (code)

Although I may never use it, I thought I'd share the following 
experiment. I find mildly frustrating the need to type:
myHash['foo']
to access a property of my hash, when for strings
myHash.foo
seems perfectly logical. (At least to me, coming from JavaScript.)

So I wrote the following code, which catches any methods not available 
for hash and treats them like keys. (Thanks to memmove on #ruby-lang for 
the idea of allowing setters in addition to getters.)



class Hash
   def method_missing(meth,*args)
     if /=$/=~(meth=meth.id2name) then
       self[meth[0...-1]] = (args.length<2 ? args[0] : args)
     else
       self[meth]
     end
   end
end

x = { 'name'=>'Gavin', 'age'=>31 }
x.weight = 171
x.feet = ['left','right']
puts x.name , x.weight , x.foo , x.inspect

PRODUCES

Gavin
171
nil
{"name"=>"Gavin", "weight"=>171, "feet"=>["left", "right"], "age"=>31}