What is a elegant way in Ruby to tell if a variable is a Hash or an Array?

Question

To check what @some_var is, I am doing a

if @some_var.class.to_s == \'Hash\' 

I am sure there is a more elegant way to check if

Answer 1

If you want to test if an object is strictly or extends a Hash, use:

value = {}
value.is_a?(Hash) || value.is_a?(Array) #=> true

But to make value of Ruby's duck typing, you could do something like:

value = {}
value.respond_to?(:[]) #=> true

It is useful when you only want to access some value using the value[:key] syntax.

Please note that Array.new["key"] will raise a TypeError.