Question

I have a set of word strings which I am turning into a hash, grouped by the size of the string. I am doing this by:

hash = set.group_by(&:size)

resulting in

hash = {5=>[apple, andys, throw, balls], 7=>[bananas, oranges]}

I want to further group the hash values by first letter, so the the end results looks like:

hash = {5=>{a=>[apple, andys],b=>[balls],t=>[throw]}, 7=>{b=>[bananas], o=>[oranges]}}

I tried putting

hash.each_value do | value |
  value = value.group_by(&:chr)
end

after the first group_by but that only seems to return the original hash. I am admittedly a ruby beginner so I’m not sure if I could do this in one fell swoop, or exactly how (&:size) notation works, if I were asked to write it out. Thoughts?

Answer 1

To update your hash you need to do like this

hash.each do |key, value|
  hash[key] = value.group_by(&:chr)
end