From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2006-12-21T05:54:40+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby gotchas

On 12/20/06, Tom Pollard <tomp@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> The point is that 'or' and 'and' have /lower/ precedence than
> anything else, so that they can be used to chain complete expressions
> together.   This is a Perl-ism, to my knowledge and a number of
> common Perl idioms are based on this. (...like, 'open(my $handle,
> $filename) or die').  I'm a nuby here, but I haven't seen the weak
> 'and' and 'or' used much in Ruby - at least, not in the same
> circumstances where I'm used to seeing it in Perl code.

Think of them as the inverse versions of the postfix "if" and "unless"

a = foo.call or puts "died"
puts "died" unless a = foo.call

a = foo.call and puts "succeeded"
puts "succeeded" if a = foo.call

martin