Local variables with hashes

Rails
1

I have a question about using local variables as values for ruby hashes.
I have to do a script that will gather meta data of video files in a
fixed directory and store them in an array of hashes. The problem is
that when I have collected the meta data to a hash called video and
append this to the end of videos array all the hash entries are the same
in the array. I assign the values to the hash and append to the videos
array with this script block:

video[“res_w”] = res_w
video[“res_h”] = res_h
video[“dur_h”] = dur_h
video[“dur_m”] = dur_m
video[“dur_s”] = dur_s
video[“dur_ms”] = dur_ms
videos << video

All the local variables have been initialized as zeroes and when my loop
retrieves another file for processing it reuses the local variables. The
actual question is does the hash store a pointer to the local variable
as its value? If it does is there a way to overwrite this behaviour or
some way around it?

2

Pentti Laitinen wrote:

video[“dur_h”] = dur_h
video[“dur_m”] = dur_m
video[“dur_s”] = dur_s
video[“dur_ms”] = dur_ms
videos << video

All the local variables have been initialized as zeroes and when my loop
retrieves another file for processing it reuses the local variables. The
actual question is does the hash store a pointer to the local variable
as its value? If it does is there a way to overwrite this behaviour or
some way around it?

Integer hash values aren’t stored as object references.

Perhaps your problem is that you’re not re-initializing
video to {} each time around the loop, so you’re always
updating a common video object.

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