Question

I have tried

STDIN.gets.chomp.split(" ")

And then converted each elements in the array to Integer.

But I believe there should be a better solution.

Answer 1

Assuming the integers cannot be negative:

nums = gets.scan(/\d+/).map(&:to_i)

Or for arbitrary input:

nums = gets.strip.split(/\s+/).map(&:to_i)

The key here is using using Array#map to invoke a block for each value in the array, creating a new array of the results for each. Then we use Symbol#to_proc (invoked by the ampersand syntax of Ruby) to tersely invoke the to_i method on each string.

For example, foo.map(&:to_i) is equivalent to foo.map{ |o| o.to_i }.

Edit: it will be slightly faster to map the array in place, and split only on a single space if you know that is the only separator, and to not use Symbol#to_proc:

nums = gets.chomp.split(' ').map!{ |o| o.to_i }

However, you are unlikely to see more than a very minor improvement here. Are you certain that you need this faster? What is your data, and what are your profiling results showing that this is a critical place where you need more speed?