Benchmarking the creation of an array of digits, lowercase and uppercase letters

gistfile1.rb

require 'benchmark'

# Which is faster for creating an array of numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters?

Benchmark.benchmark Benchmark::CAPTION, 12 do |bm|
  bm.report 'String#split' do
    100_000.times { '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'.split('') }
  end
  bm.report 'Range#to_a' do
    100_000.times { ('0'..'9').to_a + ('a'..'z').to_a + ('A'..'Z').to_a }
  end
end

__END__

Results:
                   user     system      total        real
String#split   3.740000   0.040000   3.780000 (  3.784892)
Range#to_a     1.790000   0.010000   1.800000 (  1.810478)

Range FTW!