From: "Brian Schröder" <ruby.brian@...>
Date: 2005-02-22T00:24:52+09:00
Subject: Re: destructive! operations

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:14:41 +0900, Christian Neukirchen
<chneukirchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 06:07:58 +0900, Navindra Umanee
> > <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> >> Often think it would be nice if "" and 0 were treated like nil.  Such
> >> functions could then return "".  Heck, NilClass.to_s and NilClass.to_i
> >> already return "" and 0 respectively.
> >
> > I'm far happier that they aren't.
> >
> > -austin
> 
> Sometimes, I'd like an "eating nil" that returns itself for each
> method call, and is false.
> 
> Then, stuff like that would be possible
> 
> while line = gets.ignore_if_nil.chomp
>   ...
> end
> 
> Maybe just a crazy idea... :-)

What would the ignore_if_nil call in your example do? Wouldn't the
above be equivalent to

while line = gets.chomp
  ...
end

Regards,

Brian