No, the benefit is that the separators are at the beginning of the elements, aligned and in the same column so that it is easy to see one is not missing, you also don't need to maintain the commas at the end of the line. > For the same obvious reasons as you desire that, does it sufficiently > please you that this alternate markup works: > > C:\>type tmp.rb > h = { > :a => 1, > :b => 2, > :c => 3, > } > > p h > > C:\>ruby tmp.rb > {:c=>3, :a=>1, :b=>2} > >