Range#include? in ruby 1.9

2009-08-03T08:18:00Z

Range#include? behaviour has changed in ruby 1.9 for non-numeric ranges. Rather than a greater-than/less-than check against the min and max values, the range is iterated over from min until the test value is found (or max). This is necessary to cover some edge cases of ranges which are incorrect in 1.8.7, as demonstrated by the following example:

class EvenNumber < Struct.new(:value)
  def <=>(other)
    puts "#{value} <=> #{other.value}"
    value <=> other.value
  end

  def succ
    puts "succ: #{value}"
    EvenNumber.new(value + 2)
  end
end

puts (EvenNumber.new(2)..EvenNumber.new(6)).include?(EvenNumber.new(5))


# 1.8.7
#   2 <=> 6
#   2 <=> 5
#   5 <=> 6
#   true # buggy!
# 1.9.1 
#   2 <=> 6
#   2 <=> 6
#   succ: 2
#   4 <=> 6
#   succ: 4
#   6 <=> 6
#   false # correct!

This makes sense for the conceptual range, but has a performance impact especially on large ranges. #include? has gone from O(1) to O(N). This is most likely to crop up when checking time ranges – Time#succ returns a time one second in the future.

(Time.utc(1999)..Time.utc(2001)).include?(2000) 

# 1.8.7
#   true
# 1.9.1
#   Don't wait for this to finish...

Workarounds

Ruby 1.9 introduces a new method Range#cover? that implements the old include? behaviour, however this method isn’t available in 1.8.7.

puts (EvenNumber.new(2)..EvenNumber.new(6)).cover?(EvenNumber.new(5))

# 1.8.7
#   undefined method `cover?' for #<struct EvenNumber value=2>..#<struct EvenNumber value=6> (NoMethodError)
# 1.9.1
#   2 <=> 6
#   2 <=> 5
#   5 <=> 6
#   true

Another alternative, if it makes sense for your range, is to define the to_int method, which ruby will use to do a straight comparison against your min/max values.

class EvenNumber < Struct.new(:value)
  # ... as before

  def to_int
    value
  end
end

puts (EvenNumber.new(2)..EvenNumber.new(6)).include?(EvenNumber.new(5))

# 1.8.6 and 1.9.1
#   2 <=> 6
#   2 <=> 5
#   5 <=> 6
#   true

Personally, I’ve monkey-patched range in 1.8.* to alias cover? to include?. That’s it. May your test suites not appear to hang.

Range - Xavier Shay's Blog

Range#include? in ruby 1.9

Workarounds