Hashes of Hashes Idiom in Ruby?

Question

Creating hashes of hashes in Ruby allows for convenient two (or more) dimensional lookups. However, when inserting one must always check if the first index already exists in the hash. For example:

h = Hash.new
h['x'] = Hash.new if not h.key?('x')
h['x']['y'] = value_to_insert

It would be preferable to do the following where the new Hash is created automatically:

h = Hash.new
h['x']['y'] = value_to_insert

Similarly, when looking up a value where the first index doesn't already exist, it would be preferable if nil is returned rather than receiving an undefined method for '[]' error.

looked_up_value = h['w']['z']

One could create a Hash wrapper class that has this behavior, but is there an existing a Ruby idiom for accomplishing this task?

Answer 1

You can pass the Hash.new function a block that is executed to yield a default value in case the queried value doesn't exist yet:

h = Hash.new { |h, k| h[k] = Hash.new }

Of course, this can be done recursively.

/EDIT: Wow, there's an article answering this very question.

For the sake of completeness, here's the solution from the article for arbitrary depth hashes:

hash = Hash.new(&(p=lambda{|h,k| h[k] = Hash.new(&p)}))

Credits go to Kent from Data Noise.

Answer 2

Autovivification, as it's called, is both a blessing and a curse. The trouble can be that if you "look" at a value before it's defined, you're stuck with this empty hash in the slot and you would need to prune it off later.

If you don't mind a bit of anarchy, you can always just jam in or-equals style declarations which will allow you to construct the expected structure as you query it:

((h ||= { })['w'] ||= { })['z']