Playing with Ruby hashes

deep_sort.rb

class Hash
  def deep_sort
    Hash[sort.map {|k, v| [k, v.is_a?(Hash) ? v.deep_sort : v]}]
  end
end

free_form_hash.rb

# Hash that allows arbitrarily deep assignments
# e.g.
#  h = FreeformHash.new
#  h[:a][:b][:c] = 5

class FreeformHash < Hash
  def [](key)
    unless has_key?(key)
      self[key] = FreeformHash.new
    end
    super
  end
end