Question

Is there a clever way to achieve the following in Ruby?

hash1 = { "a" => 1, "b" => 2, "d" => 3}
hash2 = { "a" => 4, "b" => 5, "c" => 7}
hash3 = { "a" => 4, "d" => 7, "e" => 9}
puts hash1.csvMerge(hash2).csvMerge(hash3)

with the output being:

{ "a" => "1,4,4",
  "b" => "2,5,0",
  "c" => "0,7,0",
  "d" => "3,0,7",
  "e" => "0,0,9" }

What I’m trying to do is merge a bunch of Ruby hashes, in practice I have over a dozen, into a single hash where the values are combined into a comma separated string.

Answer 1

hashes = [hash1, hash2, hash3]
keys = hashes.inject({}){|hh, h| hh = hh.merge(h); hh}.keys   # the set of all keys #
default_hash = keys.inject({}){|d, k| d[k] = 0; d}    # hash with value 0 for all keys #
complemented_hashes = hashes.map{|h| default_hash.merge(h)} # missing values filled in #

p Hash[complemented_hashes.map{|h| h.to_a}.flatten(1).group_by{|k, v| k}.
map{|k, v| [k, v.map{|k, v| v}.join(",")]}]