From: Jacob Fugal <lukfugl@...>
Date: 2006-10-12T05:36:31+09:00
Subject: Re: case ... when and arrays (or what was why_ showing us at

On 10/11/06, Drew Olson <olsonas@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you just want to check if the array contains that string somewhere,
> can you just use:
>
> if foo =~ array.join(" ")
>    blah
> else
>    blah2
> end

Ah, but consider:

  array = [ "foo", "bar", "baz" ]
  foo = "foo bar"
  puts(foo =~ array.join(" ") ? "true" : "false")
  puts(array.include?(foo) ? "true" : "false")
  puts case foo
    when *array: "true"
    else "false"
    end

produces:

  true
  false
  false

The semantics are different. Your approach may be valid in some cases,
I'm not discounting it altogether, but the two approaches do yield
different results in the edge cases.

Jacob Fugal