I need to find the smaller of two `Comparable` values:

```
Comparable<C> a = ...;
Comparable<C> b = ...;
Comparable<C> min = a.compareTo(b) <= 0 ? a : b;

```

This is similar to `Math.min(a, b)`, but for `Comparable`.

I know that the ternary operator is already quite short, but I can't inline the expressions for `a` and `b` and I think that `min(a, b)` and `max(a, b)` is easier to understand.

I know that there are several functions that operate on `Stream` and `Collection` values, like:

```
Stream.of(a, b).min(Comparator.naturalOrder())

```

This would help to inline the expressions, but I still find it difficult to read and a bit too much overhead for such a small task.

For the moment I'm using my own utility function, but I'm interested to know if there's an existing function for this purpose. How can one find the minimum of two `Comparable` values in a readable and library-independent manner without too much performance overhead?