From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-06-22T07:05:04+09:00
Subject: Re: if == any item in an array

On 21.06.2007 11:54, Mariusz P��kala wrote:
> On 2007-06-21 09:17:24 +0900 (Thu, Jun), 12 34 wrote:
>>> Give this code a shot. You almost had it -- the syntax you were
>>> looking for was the leading splat "*" in front of the PhotoEndings and
>>> MovieEndings in the branches of the case statement.
>>>
>> Thank you and all the others that answered. The array.include was what I 
>> was thinking too. But removing a couple of commas and adding a couple of 
>> astericks (splats) is nice. Ruby is great.
>>
>> I don't understand the meaning of the *. I imagine it comes from the 
>> wildcard usage. What do I look up in my books to understand this.
> 
> When the splat-solution appeared here an alarm bell rung in my head:
> If the array is small, like in this problem, everything is OK. But what
> if the array is huge?
> 
> I was wondering whether stack overflows could occur. I havent found
> them, but the benchmark shows that .include?() is faster.

If there are *many* choices you would probably choose another solution - 
namely creating a hash with file extensions as keys and lambdas as 
values that perform some operation.

Kind regards

	robert