Associative Arrays in Ruby
Solution 1:
Unlike PHP which conflates arrays and hashes, in Ruby (and practically every other language) they're a separate thing.
http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Hash.html
In your case it'd be:
a = {'Peter' => 32, 'Quagmire' => 'asdas'}
There are several freely available introductory books on ruby and online simulators etc.
http://www.ruby-doc.org/
Solution 2:
Use hashes, here's some examples on how to get started (all of these do the same thing, just different syntax):
a = Hash.new
a["Peter"] = 32
a["Quagmire"] = 'asdas'
Or you could do:
a = {}
a["Peter"] = 32
a["Quagmire"] = 'asdas'
Or even a one liner:
a = {"Peter" => 32, "Quagmire" => 'gigity'}