How do I get the unique elements from an array of hashes in Ruby?

Question

I have an array of hashes, and I want the unique values out of it. Calling Array.uniq doesn\'t give me what I expect.

a = [{:a => 1},{:a =&g         


        

Answer 1

I've had a similar situation, but hashes had keys. I used sorting method.

What I mean:

you have an array:

[{:x=>1},{:x=>2},{:x=>3},{:x=>2},{:x=>1}]

you sort it (#sort_by {|t| t[:x]}) and get this:

[{:x=>1}, {:x=>1}, {:x=>2}, {:x=>2}, {:x=>3}]

now a bit modified version of answer by Aaaron Hinni:

your_array.inject([]) do |result,item| 
  result << item if !result.last||result.last[:x]!=item[:x]
  result
end

I've also tried:

test.inject([]) {|r,h| r<

but it's very slow. here is my benchmark:

test=[]
1000.times {test<<{:x=>rand}}

Benchmark.bmbm do |bm|
  bm.report("sorting: ") do
    test.sort_by {|t| t[:x]}.inject([]) {|r,h| r<

results:

Rehearsal ---------------------------------------------
sorting:    0.010000   0.000000   0.010000 (  0.005633)
inject:     0.470000   0.140000   0.610000 (  0.621973)
------------------------------------ total: 0.620000sec

                user     system      total        real
sorting:    0.010000   0.000000   0.010000 (  0.003839)
inject:     0.480000   0.130000   0.610000 (  0.612438)