Array to Hash Ruby

Convert this Array:

a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"] 

...to a Hash:

{ "item 1" => "item 2", "item 3" => "item 4" }

i.e. elements at even indexes are keys and odd ones are values.

a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"]
h = Hash[*a] # => { "item 1" => "item 2", "item 3" => "item 4" }

That's it. The * is called the splat operator.

One caveat per @Mike Lewis (in the comments): "Be very careful with this. Ruby expands splats on the stack. If you do this with a large dataset, expect to blow out your stack."

So, for most general use cases this method is great, but use a different method if you want to do the conversion on lots of data. For example, @Łukasz Niemier (also in the comments) offers this method for large data sets:

h = Hash[a.each_slice(2).to_a]

Ruby 2.1.0 introduced a to_h method on Array that does what you require if your original array consists of arrays of key-value pairs: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.0/Array.html#method-i-to_h.

[[:foo, :bar], [1, 2]].to_h
# => {:foo => :bar, 1 => 2}

Just use Hash.[] with the values in the array. For example:

arr = [1,2,3,4]
Hash[*arr] #=> gives {1 => 2, 3 => 4}

Or if you have an array of [key, value] arrays, you can do:

[[1, 2], [3, 4]].inject({}) do |r, s|
  r.merge!({s[0] => s[1]})
end # => { 1 => 2, 3 => 4 }

This is what I was looking for when googling this:

=> {:a=>1, :b=>2}

Enumerator includes Enumerable. Since 2.1, Enumerable also has a method #to_h. That's why, we can write :-

a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"]
a.each_slice(2).to_h
# => {"item 1"=>"item 2", "item 3"=>"item 4"}

Because #each_slice without block gives us Enumerator, and as per the above explanation, we can call the #to_h method on the Enumerator object.

You could try like this, for single array

irb(main):019:0> a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"]
  => ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"]
irb(main):020:0> Hash[*a]
  => {"item 1"=>"item 2", "item 3"=>"item 4"}

for array of array

irb(main):022:0> a = [[1, 2], [3, 4]]
  => [[1, 2], [3, 4]]
irb(main):023:0> Hash[*a.flatten]
  => {1=>2, 3=>4}

a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4"]
Hash[ a.each_slice( 2 ).map { |e| e } ]

or, if you hate Hash[ ... ]:

a.each_slice( 2 ).each_with_object Hash.new do |(k, v), h| h[k] = v end

or, if you are a lazy fan of broken functional programming:

h = a.lazy.each_slice( 2 ).tap { |a|
  break Hash.new { |h, k| h[k] = a.find { |e, _| e == k }[1] }
}
#=> {}
h["item 1"] #=> "item 2"
h["item 3"] #=> "item 4"

All answers assume the starting array is unique. OP did not specify how to handle arrays with duplicate entries, which result in duplicate keys.

Let's look at:

a = ["item 1", "item 2", "item 3", "item 4", "item 1", "item 5"]

You will lose the item 1 => item 2 pair as it is overridden bij item 1 => item 5:

Hash[*a]
=> {"item 1"=>"item 5", "item 3"=>"item 4"}

All of the methods, including the reduce(&:merge!) result in the same removal.

It could be that this is exactly what you expect, though. But in other cases, you probably want to get a result with an Array for value instead:

{"item 1"=>["item 2", "item 5"], "item 3"=>["item 4"]}

The naïve way would be to create a helper variable, a hash that has a default value, and then fill that in a loop:

result = Hash.new {|hash, k| hash[k] = [] } # Hash.new with block defines unique defaults.
a.each_slice(2) {|k,v| result[k] << v }
a
=> {"item 1"=>["item 2", "item 5"], "item 3"=>["item 4"]}

It might be possible to use assoc and reduce to do above in one line, but that becomes much harder to reason about and read.