OrderedHash

is now a subclass of Hash that preserves order (or _is_ a Hash if running Ruby 1.9 or greater)

You might not realize it preserves order because it delegates inspect to its super-class, Hash, which doesn’t preserve order. But you will see that order is preserved if you iterate or use the keys or values methods:

>> names = ['Amy Irving', 'Jane Doe', 'John Doe', 'John Updike', 'Susan Anthony']
>> ordered = names.group_by { |name| name.split.first }
=> #<OrderedHash {"John"=>["John Doe", "John Updike"], "Amy"=>["Amy Irving"], "Susan"=>["Susan Anthony"], "Jane"=>["Jane Doe"]}>

>> ordered.keys
=> ["Amy", "Jane", "John", "Susan"]

>> ordered.each { |first, full| puts first; full.each { |name| puts "  "+name } }
Amy
  Amy Irving
Jane
  Jane Doe
John
  John Doe
  John Updike
Susan
  Susan Anthony