gistfile1.rb

# I didn't like the original for two reasons:
#  1) joining strings into a regex with "|" smells like a future bug to me
#     (unless you will never match on anything containing '|')
#  2) always using regex smells to me.  why not leave that decision to the
#     user of this method?  I offer two alternatives, based on === and ==.
#  3) this might be premature optimization, but I've skipped the map step
#     to save memory and time in calling methods that may not be used.

# true if any fields of this object match any of the values
# (implicitly converting values to case insensitive Regexp, as in original)
def any_field_matches_any_value_by_regex?(fields, values)
  regexes = values.map {|v| Regexp.new(v, Regexp::IGNORECASE) }
  fields.any? {|f| val = send(f); regexes.any? {|re| val =~ re } }
end

# true if any fields of this object match any of the values
# (using ===, my preferred approach. works with regexp, string, class, etc)
def any_field_matches_any_value?(fields, values)
  fields.any? {|f| val = send(f); values.any? {|v| v === val } }
end

# true if any fields of this object matches any of the values
# (using include?, which generally uses ==)
def any_field_included_in_values?(fields, values)
  fields.any? {|f| values.include? send(f) }
end