Benchmarking if &&, if ! blank? and unless blank?

I like the readability of: {% highlight ruby %} if !params\[:foo\].blank? stuff end {% endhighlight %} Or just: {% highlight ruby %} stuff if !params\[:foo\].blank? {% endhighlight %} But I didn't know if I was giving myself any performance gain in writing it this way. Finally I took the time to Benchmark it using the following: {% highlight ruby %} iterations = 1_000_000 Benchmark.bm do \|bm\| \# using if && bm.report do iterations.times do if params\[:event_type\] && params\[:event_type\] != '' with\['event_type'\] = params\[:event_type\].to_i end end end \# using !blank? bm.report do iterations.times do if !params\[:event_type\].blank? with\['event_type'\] = params\[:event_type\].to_i end end end \# using unless blank? bm.report do iterations.times do unless params\[:event_type\].blank? with\['event_type'\] = params\[:event_type\].to_i end end end end {% endhighlight %} And the results are: {% highlight ruby %} user system total real 3.190000 0.010000 3.200000 ( 3.215461) 3.460000 0.010000 3.470000 ( 3.481160) 3.490000 0.010000 3.500000 ( 3.509005) {% endhighlight %} The least ruby-like method of writing this turns out to be the fastest...