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

Deep deletion nil values from a hash.

  # returns new instance of hash with deleted nil values
  def self.deep_remove_nil_values(hash)
    hash.each_with_object({}) do |(k, v), new_hash|
      new_hash[k] = deep_remove_nil_values(v) if v.is_a?(Hash)
      new_hash[k] = v unless v.nil?
    end
  end

  # rewrite current hash
  def self.deep_remove_nil_values!(hash)
    hash.each do |k, v|
      deep_remove_nil_values(v) if v.is_a?(Hash)
      hash.delete(k) if v.nil?
    end
  end