Re: semenatics of if/unless/while statement modifiers

mathew wrote:

>
> On Nov 21, 2005, at 11:37 PM, Stefan Kaes wrote:
>
>> I find it rather inelegant to be forced into writing
>>
>>   if x = options[:x]
>>     f(x)
>>   end
>>
>> or even
>>
>>  f(options[:x]) if options[:x]
>>
>> instead of
>>
>>  f(x) if x=options[:x]
>>
>> The Rails source code is literally messed up with the second  
>> variant, which is potentially slower too.
>
>
> I'm really not a fan of
>
>    do thing if condition

No one forces you to use it. But it is already there and probably won't 
vanish.

All I'm striving for is that "stmt if expr" should be semantically 
equivalent to "if expr then stmt end". That's all.

>
> because to understand what it's doing I have to read it backwards.  
> It's like the old Mark Twain joke about reading a German newspaper.  
> <URL:http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html>

Well, I'm German, so maybe it's more natural for me.

But isn't "drive down the road until you see a stop sign" valid English? 
And I've never heard "until you see a stop sign, drive down the road"? 
Although this would be valid German, if translated literally :-)

-- stefan