From: Jim Weirich <jim@...>
Date: 2005-02-14T04:25:06+09:00
Subject: Re: evaluation order

On Sunday 13 February 2005 11:39 am, Robert Klemme wrote:
> Note also, that assignment in a conditional really only makes sense for
> loops.  With "if" and "unless" it's totally superfluous since you can
> always do
>
> a=x
> if a then...

I will occasionally use the a=x in an elsif statement.  Generally when the 'x' 
part looks up something that I want to process in the elsif part.  E.g.

  if parent.nil?
    handle_no_parent
  elsif children = parent.get_children
    do_somthing_with(children)
  else
    do_something_else
  end

Probably a bad example, but you get my drift.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich    jim@weirichhouse.org     http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)