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End of Life Ruby 3.2 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method

Hash#compare_by_identity

hash.compare_by_identity → self

Sets self to consider only identity in comparing keys; two keys are considered the same only if they are the same object; returns self.

By default, these two object are considered to be the same key, so s1 will overwrite s0:

Example
s0 = 'x'
s1 = 'x'
h = {}
h.compare_by_identity? # => false
h[s0] = 0
h[s1] = 1
h # => {"x"=>1}

After calling #compare_by_identity, the keys are considered to be different, and therefore do not overwrite each other:

Example
h = {}
h.compare_by_identity # => {}
h.compare_by_identity? # => true
h[s0] = 0
h[s1] = 1
h # => {"x"=>0, "x"=>1}