Ruby Hash Autovivification (Facets)

ruby hash autovivification (facets)

The standard new method for Hash accepts a block. This block is called in the event of trying to access a key in the Hash which does not exist. The block is passed the Hash itself and the key that was requested (the two parameters) and should return the value that should be returned for the requested key.

You will notice that the leet lambda does 2 things. It returns a new Hash with leet itself as the block for handling defaults. This is the behaviour which allows autonew to work for Hashes of arbitrary depth. It also assigns this new Hash to hsh[key] so that next time you request the same key you will get the existing Hash rather than a new one being created.

Is auto-initialization of multi-dimensional hash array possible in Ruby, as it is in PHP?

Try this:

def hash_with_default_hash
    Hash.new { |hash, key| hash[key] = hash_with_default_hash }
end

a = hash_with_default_hash

If the key doesn't exist, then the result of the block will be used as the default value. In this case, the default value is also a hash which uses hashes as its default values.

Ruby Autovivification

I agree with Jonas that you (and Sam) are making this more complicated than it needs to be, but I think even his version is too complicated. I'd just do this:

require 'fastercsv'
records = Hash.new(0)
FasterCSV.foreach("trades_long.dat", :col_sep => "|") do |row|
  date,time,account,ticker,desc,type,amount,price = row.fields
  records[[account,ticker,type,price]] += amount.to_f
end

Now you have a hash with total amounts for each unique combination of account, ticker, type and price.

One liner nested hash creation in Ruby? (I come from Perl)

Unfortunately, there is no simple, practical way. A Ruby equivalent would be an ugly, ugly beast like:

((((@date[month] ||= {})[day] ||= {})[hours] ||= {})[min] ||= {})[sec] = 1

There is a way to assign default values for missing keys in hashes, though:

@date = Hash.new { |hash, key| hash[key] = {} }

# @date[:month] is set to a new, empty hash because the key is missing.
@date[:month][:day] = 1

Unfortunately this does not work recursively.

...unless you create it yourself; hooray for Ruby!

class Hash
  def self.recursive
    new { |hash, key| hash[key] = recursive }
  end
end

@date = Hash.recursive
@date[month][day][hours][min][sec] = 1
# @date now equals {month=>{day=>{hours=>{min=>{sec=>1}}}}}

Keep in mind, though, that all unset values are now {} rather than nil.

How to avoid NoMethodError for missing elements in nested hashes, without repeated nil checks?

Ruby 2.3.0 introduced a new method called dig on both Hash and Array that solves this problem entirely.

name = params.dig(:company, :owner, :name)

It returns nil if the key is missing at any level.

If you are using a version of Ruby older than 2.3, you can use the ruby_dig gem or implement it yourself:

module RubyDig
  def dig(key, *rest)
    if value = (self[key] rescue nil)
      if rest.empty?
        value
      elsif value.respond_to?(:dig)
        value.dig(*rest)
      end
    end
  end
end

if RUBY_VERSION < '2.3'
  Array.send(:include, RubyDig)
  Hash.send(:include, RubyDig)
end

Autovivification in C#

I can't speak to C#, but in layman's terms, Perl's autovivification is the process of creating a container object out of an undefined value as soon as it is needed.

Despite most of Perl being quite dynamic, Perl's dereferencing syntax unambiguously specifies the type of the reference at compile time. This allows the interpreter to know what it needs out of a variable before the variable is ever defined.

my $var;  # undefined

# to autovivify to an array:
@$var = 1..5;  # @ here implies ARRAY
$$var[4] = 5;  # square brackets imply ARRAY
$#$var;        # $# implies ARRAY (returns the last index number)

# to autovivify to a hash:

%$var = (a => 1);   # % implies HASH
$$var{asdf} = 5;    # curly braces imply HASH

This list could be longer, but should give you an idea.

So basically, when you have a line like this:

my $var;
$var->[1]{x}[3]{asdf}

Perl looks on the right side of the -> and sees square braces. This means that the invocant $var must be an array reference. Since the invocant is undefined, Perl creates a new array and installs its reference into $var. This same process is then repeated for every subsequent dereferencing.

So the line above really means:

    (((($var //= [])->[1] //= {})->{x} //= [])->[3] //= {})->{asdf};

which is fairly hideous, and hence autovivification. (//= is the defined-or assignment operator in perl 5.10+)

Update:

As per cjm's comment, to put this into general non-perl terms, to achieve autovivification in another language, you need a lazy object that supports indexing via [...] and {...}. When either of these indexing operations are performed, the object replaces itself with either an array or hash. Every time the object is then accessed, if the cell is empty, it should return another lazy object.

obj = new lazy_obj()

level1 = obj[4]   # sets obj to be an array, returns a new lazy_obj for level1

level2 = level1{asdf}  # sets level1 (and obj[4]) to a hash,
                       # returns a new lazy_obj for level2

So basically you need two things, the ability to create an object that supports indexing with both array and hash subscripts (or the equivalent), and a mechanism such that an object can replace itself in memory with another object (or that can lock itself to one interpretation, and then store the new object internally.

Something like the following pseudo-code could be a start:

class autoviv {
   private var content;

   method array_subscript (idx) {
       if (!content) {
           content = new Array();
       }
       if (typeof content == Array) {
            if (exists content[idx]) return content[idx];
            return content[idx] = new autoviv();
       } else {
            throw error
       }
   }

   method hash_subscript (idx) {
       if (!content) {
           content = new Hash();
       }
       if (typeof content == Hash) {
            if (exists content{idx}) return content{idx};
            return content{idx} = new autoviv();
       } else {
            throw error
       }
   }
   // overload all other access to return undefined, so that the value
   // still looks empty for code like:
   //
   // var auto = new autoviv(); 
   // if (typeof auto[4] == autoviv) {should run}
   // if (auto[4]) {should not run}
}

Instance Eval Within Block

class Builder
    def initialize
        @lines = []
    end

    def lines(&block)
        block_given? ? instance_eval(&block) : @lines
    end

    def add_line( text )
        @lines << text
    end
end

my_builder = Builder.new
my_builder.lines {
    add_line "foo"
    add_line "bar"
}
p my_builder.lines # => ["foo", "bar"]

---

Related Topics