[ruby] Changing every value in a hash in Ruby

I want to change every value in a hash so as to add '%' before and after the value so

{ :a=>'a' , :b=>'b' }

must be changed to

{ :a=>'%a%' , :b=>'%b%' }

What's the best way to do this?

Hash.merge! is the cleanest solution

o = { a: 'a', b: 'b' }
o.merge!(o) { |key, value| "%#{ value }%" }

puts o.inspect
> { :a => "%a%", :b => "%b%" }

In Ruby 2.1 and higher you can do

{ a: 'a', b: 'b' }.map { |k, str| [k, "%#{str}%"] }.to_h

There is a new 'Rails way' method for this task :) http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/Hash.html#method-i-transform_values

The best way to modify a Hash's values in place is

hash.update(hash){ |_,v| "%#{v}%" }

Less code and clear intent. Also faster because no new objects are allocated beyond the values that must be changed.

If you are curious which inplace variant is the fastest here it is:

Calculating -------------------------------------
inplace transform_values! 1.265k (± 0.7%) i/s -      6.426k in   5.080305s
      inplace update      1.300k (± 2.7%) i/s -      6.579k in   5.065925s
  inplace map reduce    281.367  (± 1.1%) i/s -      1.431k in   5.086477s
      inplace merge!      1.305k (± 0.4%) i/s -      6.630k in   5.080751s
        inplace each      1.073k (± 0.7%) i/s -      5.457k in   5.084044s
      inplace inject    697.178  (± 0.9%) i/s -      3.519k in   5.047857s

After testing it with RSpec like this:

describe Hash do
  describe :map_values do
    it 'should map the values' do
      expect({:a => 2, :b => 3}.map_values { |x| x ** 2 }).to eq({:a => 4, :b => 9})
    end
  end
end

You could implement Hash#map_values as follows:

class Hash
  def map_values
    Hash[map { |k, v| [k, yield(v)] }]
  end
end

The function then can be used like this:

{:a=>'a' , :b=>'b'}.map_values { |v| "%#{v}%" }
# {:a=>"%a%", :b=>"%b%"}

Ruby 2.4 introduced the method Hash#transform_values!, which you could use.

{ :a=>'a' , :b=>'b' }.transform_values! { |v| "%#{v}%" }
# => {:a=>"%a%", :b=>"%b%"} 

One method that doesn't introduce side-effects to the original:

h = {:a => 'a', :b => 'b'}
h2 = Hash[h.map {|k,v| [k, '%' + v + '%']}]

Hash#map may also be an interesting read as it explains why the Hash.map doesn't return a Hash (which is why the resultant Array of [key,value] pairs is converted into a new Hash) and provides alternative approaches to the same general pattern.

Happy coding.

[Disclaimer: I am not sure if Hash.map semantics change in Ruby 2.x]

my_hash.each do |key, value|
  my_hash[key] = "%#{value}%"
end

A bit more readable one, map it to an array of single-element hashes and reduce that with merge

the_hash.map{ |key,value| {key => "%#{value}%"} }.reduce(:merge)