Deep delete from Ruby hash by dotted path

Question

Given such hash with nested hashes in Ruby (deep may vary):

hash = {"status_message"=>
         { "destination_does_not_exist"=>
           {"message_header"    => "Zielordner existiert nicht",
            "message_body"      => "Der Zielordner für das Backup existiert nicht mehr.",
            "corrective_action" => "Erstellen Sie den Zielordner."
           }
         }
       }

How can I delete key and all its children values using simple "dotted" notation? Something like:

path = "status_message.destination_does_not_exist.message_header"
hash.delete!(path)

Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6423484/how-do-i-convert-hash-keys-to-method-names — Peter Alfvin, Jun 19 '13 at 20:53

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '13 at 20:55

7

path = path.split '.'
leaf = path.pop

path.inject(hash) {|h, el| h[el]}.delete leaf

answered Jun 19 '13 at 20:55

Yossi

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Good catch, thanks. I just learning ruby, so didn't recognise this as a simple tree. – Jun 19 '13 at 21:08
Yossi, may be there is some information around operating with trees using Ruby? How to represent them using hashes and so on/ – Jun 20 '13 at 06:20
Never seen any resources on that, sorry. – Yossi Jun 20 '13 at 09:31

Deep delete from Ruby hash by dotted path

1 Answers1