This snippet of code populates an @options hash. values is an Array which contains zero or more heterogeneous items. If you invoke populate with arguments that are Hash entries, it uses the value you specify for each entry to assume a default value.

def populate(*args)
  args.each do |a|
    values = nil
    if (a.kind_of? Hash)
      # Converts {:k => "v"} to `a = :k, values = "v"`
      a, values = a.to_a.first
    end

    @options[:"#{a}"] ||= values ||= {}
  end
end

What I'd like to do is change populate such that it recursively populates @options. There is a special case: if the values it's about to populate a key with are an Array consisting entirely of (1) Symbols or (2) Hashes whose keys are Symbols (or some combination of the two), then they should be treated as subkeys rather than the values associated with that key, and the same logic used to evaluate the original populate arguments should be recursively re-applied.

That was a little hard to put into words, so I've written some test cases. Here are some test cases and the expected value of @options afterwards:

populate :a
=> @options is {:a => {}}

populate :a => 42
=> @options is {:a => 42}

populate :a, :b, :c
=> @options is {:a => {}, :b => {}, :c => {}}

populate :a, :b => "apples", :c
=> @options is {:a => {}, :b => "apples", :c => {}}

populate :a => :b
=> @options is {:a => :b}

# Because [:b] is an Array consisting entirely of Symbols or
# Hashes whose keys are Symbols, we assume that :b is a subkey
# of @options[:a], rather than the value for @options[:a].
populate :a => [:b]
=> @options is {:a => {:b => {}}}

populate :a => [:b, :c => :d]
=> @options is {:a => {:b => {}, :c => :d}}

populate :a => [:a, :b, :c]
=> @options is {:a => {:a => {}, :b => {}, :c => {}}}

populate :a => [:a, :b, "c"]
=> @options is {:a => [:a, :b, "c"]}

populate :a => [:one], :b => [:two, :three => "four"]
=> @options is {:a => :one, :b => {:two => {}, :three => "four"}}

populate :a => [:one], :b => [:two => {:four => :five}, :three => "four"]
=> @options is {:a => :one,
                :b => {
                   :two => {
                      :four => :five
                      }
                   },
                   :three => "four"
                }
               }

It is acceptable if the signature of populate needs to change to accommodate some kind of recursive version. There is no limit to the amount of nesting that could theoretically happen.

Any thoughts on how I might pull this off?