From: Adam Prescott <adam@...>
Date: 2013-02-18T09:02:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Simpler refactor?

You could try something like,

[:subject_id, :book_id, :chapter_id, :section_id, :subsection_id,
:minisection_id].each do |e|
  instance_variable_set("@#{e}", session[e]) unless session[e].blank?
end

That only covers refactoring your code as given. Depending on where
you then use these instance variables, there might be a neater
refactoring by not relying on instance variables. I don't know where
you later use them, or what session is an instance of, but there might
be a much simpler way by mapping session to non-blank values and using
the resulting hashmap where needed.