Hi -- On Mon, 25 Sep 2006, Vimal wrote: > Hi > Say I have a Hash, and an instance called wordcount, that maps strings > to a number count, that counts the occurance of the word. > > I do > > count = Hash.new > count[word]++ if count[word] Not in Ruby you don't :-) > count[word]=1 unless count[word] > > everytime! Is there a simple way to do it? You could do: count = Hash.new(0) # default to 0 count[word] += 1 # each time through loop David -- David A. Black | dblack / wobblini.net Author of "Ruby for Rails" [1] | Ruby/Rails training & consultancy [3] DABlog (DAB's Weblog) [2] | Co-director, Ruby Central, Inc. [4] [1] http://www.manning.com/black | [3] http://www.rubypowerandlight.com [2] http://dablog.rubypal.com | [4] http://www.rubycentral.org