From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-12-24T05:21:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with a ruby idiom

Hi --

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> Might I be a curmudgeon on this Christmas eve eve? I say that any idiom 
> that's confusing enough that its semantics isn't *instantly* recognizable to 
> an old FORTRAN programmer like my curmudgeonly self probably doesn't 
> contribute to code readability. :) So I would write this out in "longhand" 
> and not let the parser have an opportunity to confuse me. So my "idiom" would 
> be
>
> if (!a) then
> a = b
> end

That won't work though:

ruby -e 'if (!a) then a = b end'
-e:1: undefined local variable or method `a' for main:Object
(NameError)

because of the forward reference to a.

> Or, since my curmudgeonly self has managed to learn Perl, :)
>
> a = b if !a

||= is used a lot in Perl, too :-)  I guess I'm just used to it; my
eye takes it in pretty readily.


David

-- 
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A. RUBY FOR RAILS by David A. Black (http://www.manning.com/black)
    aka The Ruby book for Rails developers!
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A. Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)