Accessing elements of nested hashes in ruby [duplicate]

Answer 1

Not that I would do it, but you can Monkeypatch in NilClass#[]:

> structure = { :a => { :b => 'foo' }}
#=> {:a=>{:b=>"foo"}}

> structure[:x][:y]
NoMethodError: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass
        from (irb):2
        from C:/Ruby/bin/irb:12:in `
'

> class NilClass; def [](*a); end; end
#=> nil

> structure[:x][:y]
#=> nil

> structure[:a][:y]
#=> nil

> structure[:a][:b]
#=> "foo"

Go with @DigitalRoss's answer. Yes, it's more typing, but that's because it's safer.