Question

Let’s say I have the following array:

arr = [[5, 1], [2, 7]]

and I want to find the minimum element, comparing the second element of the elements. The minimum element will be [5, 1] since 1 is less than 7. I can use the following code:

arr.min {|a,b| a[1] <=> b[1]}

For calculating the maximum, I can do the same:

arr.max {|a,b| a[1] <=> b[1]}

That gives [2, 7].

I use the same block all the time. I would like to have that block somewhere and provide it to the min/max function. I hoped something like:

blo = lambda {|a,b| a[1] <=> b[1]}
arr.min blo

would work, but it didn’t. Any idea on how I can do this?

Answer 1

Use the & operator to turn a Proc object into a block.

arr.min &blo