From: "Simon Kröger" <SimonKroeger@...>
Date: 2006-10-18T05:00:26+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby way to say this?

matt neuburg wrote:
> In Ruby, zero isn't false and there is no equivalent of the ?: operator
> with the middle term omitted. So e.g. I'd like to say [pseudo-code from
> some other language]:
> 
> oneThing()?:otherThing()
> 
> meaning, if oneThing is nonzero, return oneThing, else return
> otherThing. Now, I don't want to evaluate oneThing twice, so I've ended
> up with this:

Well, most of the time just ask ruby to do what you want:

oneThing.nonzero? || otherThing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
num.nonzero? => num or nil

Returns num if num is not zero, nil otherwise. This behavior is useful when
chaining comparisons:

   a = %w( z Bb bB bb BB a aA Aa AA A )
   b = a.sort {|a,b| (a.downcase <=> b.downcase).nonzero? || a <=> b }
   b   #=> ["A", "a", "AA", "Aa", "aA", "BB", "Bb", "bB", "bb", "z"]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

cheers

Simon