More elegant way to do this in Ruby

Question

I've started with Ruby and am finding new, shorter, elegant ways to write code everyday.

In solving Project Euler problems, I've written a lot of code like

if best_score < current_score
  best_score = current_score
end

Is there a more elegant way to write this?

Answer 1

best_score = [best_score, current_score].max

see: Enumerable.max

---

disclaimer: although this is a little more readable (imho), it's less performant:

require 'benchmark'

best_score, current_score, n = 1000, 2000, 100_000

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { n.times do best_score = [best_score, current_score].max end }
  x.report { n.times do 
    best_score = current_score if best_score < current_score 
  end }
end

will result in (with ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287)):

    user     system      total        real
0.160000   0.000000   0.160000 (  0.160333)
0.030000   0.000000   0.030000 (  0.030578)

Answer 2

This can be done on a single line:

best_score = current_score if best_score < current_score