Hi, From: "Albert Vernon Smith" <smithav / cshl.edu> > > On 10.4.2006, at 14:05, James Edward Gray II wrote: > >> Can you show an example using Perl's auto-vivification that feels >> funny in Ruby? Perhaps we would have better ideas after seeing it... > > Didn't feel funny, I just wasn't use to having to declare objects > (hashes and arrays) as I added them as branches on my initial hash. > I had to use a little more discipline, which probably is a good thing > coming from Perl-land. Incidentally, if you ever need an auto-vivifying hash-of-hashes (as opposed to mixture of hashes and arrays that is possible because of Perl syntax), you can do the hash-of-hashes auto-vivify in Ruby: HashFactory = lambda { Hash.new {|h,k| h[k] = HashFactory.call} } irb(main):181:0> x = HashFactory.call => {} irb(main):182:0> x['abc']['def']['ghi'] = 123 => 123 irb(main):183:0> x => {"abc"=>{"def"=>{"ghi"=>123}}} Regards, Bill