# Hash With Indifferent Access vs Ruby Hash

I was recently going through a PR and realised we were creating new hash in 2 ways across our codebase.

- `hash = HashWithIndifferentAccess.new`
- `hash = {}`

It just occured to me I never read up on which way is better or why we do this. So here's a small dive into this.

## HashWithIndifferentAccess(HWIA)

Class HashWithIndifferentAccess is inherited from ruby "Hash" & above special behavior is added in it. As the name suggests you can access keys in either ways, string or symbol.

Basically `hash[:key]` and `hash['key']` are same in HWIA case but different for ruby hashes.

![hash](https://i.imgur.com/6D4tdR1.png)

## Which is better?

Using symbols not only saves time when doing comparisons, but also saves memory, because they are only stored once. It's the ruby way of doing things. __But in most cases it won't make much of a diffrence unless you are working with really large Hashes__.

[Here](https://medium.com/@gorbikoff/ruby-hash-key-showdown-symbol-vs-string-c0655afbcfca) is an article that goes into benchmarking `strings vs symbols` for those interested.