Check if a string variable is in a set of strings

Question

Which one is better:

x == 'abc' || x == 'def' || x == 'ghi'
%w(abc def ghi).include? x
x =~ /abc|def|ghi/

?

Answer 1

Which one is better? The question can't be easily answered, because they don't all do the same things.

x == 'abc' || x == 'def' || x == 'ghi'
%w(abc def ghi).include? x

compare x against fixed strings for equality. x has to be one of those values. Between those two I tend to go with the second because it's easier to maintain. Imagine what it would look like if you had to compare against twenty, fifty or one hundred strings.

The third test:

x ~= /abc|def|ghi/

matches substrings:

x = 'xyzghi'
(x =~ /abc|def|ghi/) # => 3

so it isn't the same as the first two.

EDIT: There are some things in the benchmarks done by nash that I'd do differently. Using Ruby 1.9.2-p180 on a MacBook Pro, this tests 1,000,000 loops and compares the results of anchoring the regex, using grouping, along with not splitting the %w() array each time through the loop:

require 'benchmark'
str = "test"

n = 1_000_000
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { n.times { str == 'abc' || str == 'def' || str == 'ghi' } }
  x.report { n.times { %w(abc def ghi).include? str } }
  x.report { ary = %w(abc def ghi); n.times { ary.include? str } }
  x.report { n.times { str =~ /abc|def|ghi/ } }
  x.report { n.times { str =~ /^abc|def|ghi$/ } }
  x.report { n.times { str =~ /^(abc|def|ghi)$/ } }
  x.report { n.times { str =~ /^(?:abc|def|ghi)$/ } }
  x.report { n.times { str =~ /\b(?:abc|def|ghi)\b/ } }
end
# >>       user     system      total        real
# >>   1.160000   0.000000   1.160000 (  1.165331)
# >>   1.920000   0.000000   1.920000 (  1.920120)
# >>   0.990000   0.000000   0.990000 (  0.983921)
# >>   1.070000   0.000000   1.070000 (  1.068140)
# >>   1.050000   0.010000   1.060000 (  1.054852)
# >>   1.060000   0.000000   1.060000 (  1.063909)
# >>   1.060000   0.000000   1.060000 (  1.050813)
# >>   1.050000   0.000000   1.050000 (  1.056147)