Question

Simplified version:

ar=['name: Joe', 'name: Jack', 'name: Jill']

hash={}

ar.each{|line| if line.include?('name'); hash['name'] = line;end;}

puts hash

My aim is to add all the elements in the array to the ‘name’-key, but my code seeme to over-write the existing value.

Is’nt it possible to have multiple values assigned to one single key? I’d rather not use an array as value.

Edit:

I realized that my first example did’nt cover the whole problem:

extend the array to:
ar=[‘name: Joe’, ‘name: Jack’, ‘name: Jill’, age: 29′, ‘age: 32’, ‘misc: Great weather’]

What i’d is to have the ‘name’s grouped under the key ‘name’, and so on.

The number of attributes/keys is not known beforehand, so the arrays will have top be made dynamiclly.

Answer 1

There’s no option besides using an array as a value. Otherwise how would you retrieve the multiple values? You’d need some kind of enumerable anyway, so there’s no problem with using an array.

Try something like this:

hash = {}
ar = ['name: Joe', 'name: Jack', 'name: Jill']

hash['name'] = ar.select {|l| l.include? 'name'}.collect {|l| l.split.last}

hash # => {"name"=>["Joe", "Jack", "Jill"]}

Or, a little more simply:

hash = {"name" => ar.select {|l| l.include? 'name'}.collect {|l| l.split.last} }

---

For your edited question:

hash = Hash.new {|h,k| h[k] = [] }
ar.each {|l| k,v = l.split(": "); hash[k] << v }
hash # => {"name"=>["Joe", "Jack", "Jill"], "foo"=>["bar"]}