Ruby Hash

A hash is an associative array, which is pretty much an array with key-value pairs of which the keys are unique.

In Ruby it can be denoted in many ways

hash1 = {:name => 'John', :age => 24}
hash2 = {name: 'John', age: 24}       # recommended way, though I don't use it as much
hash1 === hash2                       # returns true

If you are passing a hash as a parameter to a function, there are even more ways

def accept_hash(a_hash)
    puts a_hash
end

accept_hash({:name => 'John', :age => 24}) # non-recommended way
accept_hash({name: 'John', age: 24})       # recommended way
accept_hash(name: 'John', age: 24)         # short version of the recommended way.
                                           # This can be confusing though

That doesn't stop there. If the function is accepting a value and a hash, things get weirder

def accept_value_and_hash(v, h)
    puts v
    puts h
end

accept_value_and_hash('a teacher', name: 'John', age: 24)
# Output:
# a teacher
# {:name=>"John", :age=>24}

As you can see, Ruby is smart enough (or too much magic, imho) to combine ... , name: 'John', age: 24 into a hash.

This only works if to-be-hash parameters are supplied last, i.e. below won't work

accept_value_and_hash(name: 'John', age: 24, 'a teacher')

# Output:
# syntax error, unexpected ')', expecting =>

Notes

If you are coming from a PHP / Javascript background like me then the following notes might be useful

Hash is a special array. But in ruby hash and array are different

a_hash = {:name=>"John", :age=>24}   # encapsulated with {}
an_array = ['John', 'Sue']           # encapsulated with []

A group of hashes is still an array

x = [{:name => 'John'}, {:name => 'Sue'}]