When is it better to use a Struct rather than a Hash in Ruby?

Question

A Ruby Struct allows an instance to be generated with a set of accessors:

# Create a structure named by its constant
Customer = Struct.new(:name, :address)     #         


        

Answer 1

A Struct has the feature that you can get at its elements by index as well as by name:

irb(main):004:0> Person = Struct.new(:name, :age)
=> Person
irb(main):005:0> p = Person.new("fred", 26)
=> #
irb(main):006:0> p[0]
=> "fred"
irb(main):007:0> p[1]
=> 26
irb(main):008:0> p.name
=> "fred"
irb(main):009:0> p.age
=> 26

which sometimes is useful.