Comparing a variable against two different values in Ruby

Question

This is more a question of semantics than anything else.

I'd like to check if a variable is either one of two values. The easiest way of doing this would be:

if var == "foo" || var == "bar"
# or
if var == 3     || var == 5

But this doesn't feel very DRY to me. I know I can use String.match(), but that doesn't work for non-string variables and is three times slower.

Is there a better way of checking a variable against two values?

Answer 1

Put all values into an array and then it should be easy.

%w[foo bar].include?('foo') # => true

[3,5].include?(3) # => true

Answer 2

You could do:

%W(foo bar baz).include? var

Or:

[3, 5].include? var

Answer 3

The case statement seems to do what you want.

case var
  when "foo", "bar" then case1()
end

case var
  when 3, 5 then case2()
end

The array-based methods seem likely to be slower than this.