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End of Life Ruby 3.1 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method

Hash#flatten

hash.flatten → new_array
hash.flatten(level) → new_array

Returns a new Array object that is a 1-dimensional flattening of self.


By default, nested Arrays are not flattened:

Example
h = {foo: 0, bar: [:bat, 3], baz: 2}
h.flatten # => [:foo, 0, :bar, [:bat, 3], :baz, 2]

Takes the depth of recursive flattening from Integer argument level:

Example
h = {foo: 0, bar: [:bat, [:baz, [:bat, ]]]}
h.flatten(1) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, [:bat, [:baz, [:bat]]]]
h.flatten(2) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, :bat, [:baz, [:bat]]]
h.flatten(3) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, :bat, :baz, [:bat]]
h.flatten(4) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, :bat, :baz, :bat]

When level is negative, flattens all nested Arrays:

Example
h = {foo: 0, bar: [:bat, [:baz, [:bat, ]]]}
h.flatten(-1) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, :bat, :baz, :bat]
h.flatten(-2) # => [:foo, 0, :bar, :bat, :baz, :bat]

When level is zero, returns the equivalent of to_a :

Example
h = {foo: 0, bar: [:bat, 3], baz: 2}
h.flatten(0) # => [[:foo, 0], [:bar, [:bat, 3]], [:baz, 2]]
h.flatten(0) == h.to_a # => true
See also #filter! #hash #filter #has_key? also in 4.1 · 4.0 · 3.4 · 3.3 · 3.2 · 3.0