Elegant ruby syntax to return the greater of two objects
If you don't want to spawn an array, there's the conditional operator:
max = a > b ? a : b
Okay, I tested this out of curiosity:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby# -*- mode: ruby -*-limit = 3000000tstart_1 = Time.now()(0..limit).each do |i; a,b, max| a = rand(9999999) b = rand(9999999) max = [a,b].maxendputs "Array method: #{Time.now() - tstart_1} seconds"tstart_2 = Time.now()(0..limit).each do |i; a,b, max| a = rand(9999999) b = rand(9999999) max = (a > b) ? a : bendputs "Ternary method: #{Time.now() - tstart_2} seconds"Output:
Array method: 1.746134 seconds
Ternary method: 1.002226 seconds
That's exactly why Enumerable#max has been defined for any class which implements Comparable. It's definitely the simplest. To really understad what's happening, you'd need to look how it's been implemented in the core library of your favourite Ruby implementation (and it's probably optimised).