What is the best way to convert an array to a hash in Ruby

Question

In Ruby, given an array in one of the following forms...

[apple, 1, banana, 2]
[[apple, 1], [banana, 2]]

...what is the best way to convert

Answer 1

If the numeric values are seq indexes, then we could have simpler ways... Here's my code submission, My Ruby is a bit rusty

   input = ["cat", 1, "dog", 2, "wombat", 3]
   hash = Hash.new
   input.each_with_index {|item, index|
     if (index%2 == 0) hash[item] = input[index+1]
   }
   hash   #=> {"cat"=>1, "wombat"=>3, "dog"=>2}