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It’s always bugged me that Hash#collect returns an Array. And Hash#collect! simply gags and kicks a leg. It’s another situation where we’re lacking a really smashing RCR. We’ve had Hash#collect_to_hash and Enumerable#make_hash—the latter being more favorable, right??

Gavin Sinclair’s build_hash (from extensions) is a newer version of make_hash. Like collect and map, but designed to return a Hash. Is there anything wrong with using build_hash as Hash’s own special collect?

  module Enumerable
    def build_hash
      result = {}
      self.each do |elt|
        key, value = yield elt
        result[key] = value
      end
      result
    end
  end

  class Hash
    alias collect build_hash
  end

And I’m also going to throw in Hash#collect! for your money. This method should be!! And, for the first time in years, I’m citing PoLS. I say we each get a “Go Directly To PoLS” card every age.modulo(7).zero?.

  class Hash
    def collect!( &blk )
      self.replace( build_hash( &blk ) )
    end
    alias map! collect!
  end