Extra Credit | Symbols and hash keys.

First, you should create a method and pass in the hash. Then create a new empty hash so you can put the new hash into it since you can't modify a hash while you are iterating it. Then, you need to loop through each key of the hash inside of the function. You will want to check if the value of the current key is a hash, hash[key].is_a? Hash. If that is true you need to call your function recursively, otherwise just call to_sym on the key and put it into the temporary hash. Finally, return the new hash.

This is my solution to the problem, but I'm pretty sure there is a better way to do it. Also, I don't really understand what a recursive function is.

1. created a hash grades
2. created a function symbolize and passed hash to it
3. new hash sym_hash will be the final hash with symbols instead of strings
4. loop through keys and values and store them in key and value
5. put each pair of key ( key.gsub(/\s+/, "" removes white spaces; it seems like symbols cannot have white spaces, but I might be wrong) and value into sym_hash
6. prints out sym_hash

grades = { "Jane Doe" => 10, "Jim McDonalds" => 6, "Wizzy" => nil }

def symbolize(hash)
   sym_hash = {}
   hash.each_pair do |key, value|
      sym_hash.merge!(key.gsub(/\s+/, "").intern => value)
   end
   puts sym_hash
end

symbolize(grades)

This is the result:

{ :JaneDoe=>10, :JimMcDonalds=>6, :Wizzy=>nil }