Removing all empty elements from a hash / YAML?

Question

How would I go about removing all empty elements (empty list items) from a nested Hash or YAML file?

Answer 1

You could add a compact method to Hash like this

class Hash
  def compact
    delete_if { |k, v| v.nil? }
  end
end

or for a version that supports recursion

class Hash
  def compact(opts={})
    inject({}) do |new_hash, (k,v)|
      if !v.nil?
        new_hash[k] = opts[:recurse] && v.class == Hash ? v.compact(opts) : v
      end
      new_hash
    end
  end
end