Accessing elements of nested hashes in ruby [duplicate]

Answer 1

In my case, I needed a two-dimensional matrix where each cell is a list of items.

I found this technique which seems to work. It might work for the OP:

$all = Hash.new()

def $all.[](k)
  v = fetch(k, nil)
  return v if v

  h = Hash.new()
  def h.[](k2)
    v = fetch(k2, nil)
    return v if v
    list = Array.new()
    store(k2, list)
    return list
  end

  store(k, h)
  return h
end

$all['g1-a']['g2-a'] << '1'
$all['g1-a']['g2-a'] << '2'

$all['g1-a']['g2-a'] << '3'
$all['g1-a']['g2-b'] << '4'

$all['g1-b']['g2-a'] << '5'
$all['g1-b']['g2-c'] << '6'

$all.keys.each do |group1|
  $all[group1].keys.each do |group2|
    $all[group1][group2].each do |item|
      puts "#{group1} #{group2} #{item}"
    end
  end
end

The output is:

$ ruby -v && ruby t.rb
ruby 1.9.2p0 (2010-08-18 revision 29036) [x86_64-linux]
g1-a g2-a 1
g1-a g2-a 2
g1-a g2-a 3
g1-a g2-b 4
g1-b g2-a 5
g1-b g2-c 6