From: Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality <ihatespam@...>
Date: 2006-09-13T03:05:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Maximum value of hash


"Bart Braem" <bart.braem@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ee6l7b$7nf$1@ikaria.belnet.be...
> Farrel Lifson wrote:
>
>> On 12/09/06, Bart Braem <bart.braem@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A very simple question: what's the best way to get the maximum value of 
>>> a
>>> hash? Currently I have something like:
>>>
>>> max = 0
>>> hash.each_value do |value|
>>>         if (value > max )
>>>                 max = value
>>>         end
>>> end
>>>
>>> But it does not feel ruby... Same question for sum, but I guess the
>>> answer will be similar?
>>
>> hash.values.max
>>
> Thanks Farrel (and all others) for the fast replies. It didn't occur with 
> me
> that the values array had this method of course...

    Just in case you didn't realise this, the Array class (and, thus, _all_ 
arrays) has the max method.  If you wanted the max of two values, you'd put 
those two values in an array and then take the max of that array...

a = 2
b = 3
max = [a, b].max

    Since Hash#values returns an _array_ of hash values...