The dark side of Array#include?

I was recently writing some code in Ruby to check whether a word did not include a vowel,that is, checking that it only had consonants.

The code looked something like this.

if !word.include? vowel
  ## initiate countdown sequence
end

If this was to go through code review, one of the suggestions would be to use unless to replace if !

I could then write this as:

unless word.include? vowel
  ## commence code review!
end

I’ve had problems reading code that uses unless because it adds a layer of complexity to understanding.

I found myself yearning for the not in clause from Python which is closer to English.

In Python, I could do:

if vowel not in word:
  # go to mars
end

I think that not in reads better especially when checking whether an item is inside an array.

Maybe it’s time for Ruby to:

import "not in" from python;