What is the closest thing in Erlang to hashes?

Question

What I wanted was a way to pass arguments into functions which resembled a ruby hash map. Although maybe this is a bad fit for Erlang, I'm not sure yet

In Ruby I often used hashes like:

{"a"=>100, "b"=>200}

: What is the closest thing in Erlang?

Update: I have since found this:

http://20bits.com/articles/erlang-an-introduction-to-records/

Is using records a good candidate?

Answer 1

proplists, dicts, or gb_trees.

Answer 2

Erlang R17A will include map data structure.