Hashes of Hashes Idiom in Ruby?

Question

Creating hashes of hashes in Ruby allows for convenient two (or more) dimensional lookups. However, when inserting one must always check if the first index already exists i

Answer 1

Autovivification, as it's called, is both a blessing and a curse. The trouble can be that if you "look" at a value before it's defined, you're stuck with this empty hash in the slot and you would need to prune it off later.

If you don't mind a bit of anarchy, you can always just jam in or-equals style declarations which will allow you to construct the expected structure as you query it:

((h ||= { })['w'] ||= { })['z']