Ruby sort by multiple values?

It probably means you're missing one of the fields 'foo' or 'bar' in one of your objects.

The comparison is coming down to something like nil <=> 2, which returns nil (instead of -1, 0 or 1) and #sort_by doesn't know how to handle nil.

Try this:

a.sort_by {|h| [ h['foo'].to_i, h['bar'].to_i ]}

What you have posted works in Ruby 1.8.7:

ruby-1.8.7-p302 > a = [{'foo'=>99,'bar'=>1},{'foo'=>0,'bar'=>2}]
 => [{"foo"=>99, "bar"=>1}, {"foo"=>0, "bar"=>2}] 

ruby-1.8.7-p302 > a.sort_by{ |h| [h['foo'],h['bar']] }
 => [{"foo"=>0, "bar"=>2}, {"foo"=>99, "bar"=>1}] 

ruby-1.8.7-p302 > a.sort_by{ |h| [h['bar'],h['foo']] }
 => [{"foo"=>99, "bar"=>1}, {"foo"=>0, "bar"=>2}] 

a.sort { |a, b| [a['foo'], a['bar']] <=> [b['foo'], b['bar']] }