Question

I want to create hash that will look like this:

{nil => "Cat", 0 => "Dog", 1 => "1", ... 16 => "16"}

And this is how I do it:

hash = { nil => "Cat",0 => "Dog" }
(1..16).to_a.each { |e| hash[e] = e.to_s }

And this just looks ugly. Is there a better way to achieve this (in version 1.8.7)?

Thanks

Answer 1

How about:

(1..16).inject({nil => "Cat", 0 => "Dog"}) { |a, i| a[i] = i.to_s; a }

This works in both 1.8.7 and 1.9.2.