Ruby factorial function

Question

I'm going crazy: Where is the Ruby function for factorial? No, I don't need tutorial implementations, I just want the function from the library. It's not in Math!

I'm starting to doubt, is it a standard library function?

Answer 1

There is no factorial function in the standard library.

Answer 2

It's not in the standard library but you can extend the Integer class.

class Integer
  def factorial_recursive
    self <= 1 ? 1 : self * (self - 1).factorial
  end
  def factorial_iterative
    f = 1; for i in 1..self; f *= i; end; f
  end
  alias :factorial, :factorial_recursive
end

N.B. Iterative factorial is a better choice for obvious performance reasons.