Issue #20300 has been reported by AMomchilov (Alexander Momchilov). ---------------------------------------- Feature #20300: Hash: set value and get pre-existing value in one call https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20300 * Author: AMomchilov (Alexander Momchilov) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- When using a Hash, sometimes you want to set a new value, *and* see what was already there. Today, you **have** to do this in two steps: ```ruby h = { k: "old value" } # 1. Do a look-up for `:k`. old_value = h[:k] # 2. Do another look-up for `:k`, even though we just did that! h[:k] = "new value" use(old_value) ``` This requires two separate `Hash` look-ups for `:k`. This is fine for symbols, but is expensive if computing `#hash` or `#eql?` is expensive for the key. It's impossible to work around this today from pure Ruby code. I propose adding `Hash#update_value`, which has semantics are similar to this Ruby snippet: ```ruby class Hash def update_value(key, new_value) old_value = self[key] self[key] = new_value old_value end end ``` ... except it'll be implemented in C, with modifications to `tbl_update` that achieves this with a hash-lookup. Here's a PR with a PoC implementation: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/10092 -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/