Benchmark: timing 1000000 iterations of Grep, Max, Ternary...
      Grep:  9 wallclock secs (10.02 usr +  0.00 sys = 10.02 CPU) @ 99760.57/s (n=1000000)
       Max: 21 wallclock secs (20.92 usr +  0.00 sys = 20.92 CPU) @ 47801.15/s (n=1000000)
   Ternary: 22 wallclock secs (21.31 usr +  0.00 sys = 21.31 CPU) @ 46926.33/s (n=1000000)

This is perl, v5.6.0 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread