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Ruby Ruby Collections Ruby Hashes Working with Hash Keys

Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points
Posted by Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points

Why the following hashes are not equivalent?

I am creating two hashes:

book1 = {"name"=>"Inferno"}

book2 = {name : "Inferno"} When I check if book1 == book2 in irb(in WorkSpaces), I get false. Are these two hashes equivalent or not?

Rémy Lecostey
Rémy Lecostey
2,972 Points
Rémy Lecostey
Rémy Lecostey
2,972 Points

Because the book1 has a string hash key, and the book2 has a symbol hash key. For example : book3 = {:name =>"Inferno"} book3 == book2 return true, because both hash are using symbols as hash keys.

1 Answer

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points
Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

Symbols and strings are not the same in Ruby. You should consider them as completely different data types, since they do not respond to the same sets of methods. Just like 1 == "1" would return false. You'd have to read more about the differences and do some experiments in the console to get the whole picture.