From: furufuru@... (Ryo Furue)
Date: 2001-08-08T17:16:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19361] Re: Speaking of the ternary operator....

David Alan Black <dblack@candle.superlink.net> wrote in message news:<VzUb7.20370$5j7.1557688@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>...
[...]
> I seem to remember at one point someone saying that the ternary
> operator might be vanishing from Ruby at some point.
[...]
> Personally I wouldn't miss it, though that's neither here nor there.

Personally I would miss it!  To me this

    avar = (i > 3) ?  large : small

looks clearer and cleaner than

    avar = if i > 3 then large else small end

The problem (to me) with the latter is that the keywords ("then",
"else", and "end") don't look different enough from the identifiers
("large" and "small").

Although I like Ruby very much and prefer it to Perl, this aspect of
Ruby is the last thing I like.  For example, I'd prefer

    if (somecond) {puts message; exit 1}

to

    if somecond then puts message; exit 1 end

(Have I got it right?  I'm still new to Ruby.)
In the former, you can tell at a glance which is the condition and
which is the block of code.  In short, a pair of braces is better than
a pair of keywords in one-liners.  Also, compare a C-like

    if (cond) method(arg)

with a Ruby counterpart

    if cond then method(arg) end

What do you think?

Cheers,
Ryo