Hashes vs arrays in Ruby

Question

Are there associative arrays in Ruby? Or associative arrays are just hashes for Ruby?

I heard in Ruby hashes and associative arrays aren't the same thing (like in some other languages).

So are there practical difference between associative arrays and hashes?

There are no "associative arrays" in ruby. That's an idiosyncrasy of PHP. — Sergio Tulentsev, Sep 18 '14 at 17:40
I voted to close this as a duplicate, but the down votes are really unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with being a newbie and asking a good question, just because others have asked it before. — jdl, Sep 18 '14 at 17:42
@jdl: Technically, there *is* something wrong. Failure to search before asking. — Sergio Tulentsev, Sep 18 '14 at 17:43
I agree with both of you, but it's a very straightforward search. I searched on "ruby associative arrays" and the original question was at the top of the list. Same when I used Google to search "ruby associative arrays site:stackoverflow.com". — Cary Swoveland, Sep 18 '14 at 17:49
You're right and I found those post, but I read there: _"in Ruby they're a separate thing."_ And this was for me confusing that associative arrays and hashes are separated things in Ruby. So I just asked. Now I notice that that author was thinking about normal arrays not associative. — Jensky, Sep 18 '14 at 17:57
@Jensky: yeah. he didn't say "associative arrays". But it could be misunderstood, I guess. — Sergio Tulentsev, Sep 18 '14 at 18:01

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 18 '14 at 17:38

0

In Ruby there's a strict difference between Array and Hash:

array = [ 1, 2, 3, 4]
array[2]
# => 3

hash = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 }
hash[:a]
# => 1
hash[1]
# => nil

Unlike PHP, arrays are always a series of zero or more objects that have a particular ordering and hashes are key/value pairs.

answered Sep 18 '14 at 17:38

tadman

1 Answers1