Array or hash in Ruby

Question

Could anyone explain what is faster for reading, writing in Ruby: an Array or a Hash? And what are the usecases for Array and Hash?

Array.new
Hash.new

Answer 1

If you need to store only some unique unordered values, please consider using Set.new. It's convenient hash based class with writing and reading in constant time.

Answer 2

For reading and writing Hash.new is faster than Array.new. Watch this Why Hashes Will Be Faster in Ruby 2.0.