A one-liner alternative for hash-only cases can be implemented using Enumerable#reduce: root = {} [:a, :b, :c].reduce(root){@1[@2]||={}}[:d] = 'E' # root => {:a=>{:b=>{:c=>{:d=>"E"}}}}

I think the issues/problems specified in the comments are not present with a Hash-only implementation. :) I would be supportive of re-considering this feature just for use with a Hash, where I believe 80% of the real-life use cases would (and do) exist. I have encountered this need before in the wild, but not with Arrays.