From: Christopher Dicely <cmdicely@...>
Date: 2011-05-03T13:28:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Help making a method more concise

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Mark Hayes <mark@deployfx.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm looking to improve my skills as a Rubyist and would like to know if the
> "depth" method could be expressed more precisely.  Any help would be greatly
> appreciated, thanks!
>
> require 'test/unit'
>
> class Node
>  attr_accessor :value, :lchild, :rchild
>
>  def depth
>    [lchild ? lchild.depth : 0, rchild ? rchild.depth : 0].max + 1
>  end
> end


def depth
  1 + [lchild,rchild].map {|ch| [ch}.max
end

or even:

def depth
   1 + [lchild,rchild].map(&:to_i).max
end

alias to_i depth

or:

add empty (no value) left & right children when you first add a value
to a node, and:

def empty?
  @value.nil?
end

def depth
  empty? ? 0 : [lchild,rchild].map(&:depth).max
end