From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2007-04-14T22:31:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Idiom wanted (now hiring!)

On 4/14/07, Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Robert Dober" <robert.dober@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On 4/13/07, Nobuyoshi Nakada <nobu@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> At Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:57:47 +0900,
> >> Robert Dober wrote in [ruby-talk:247783]:
> >> > > a = func(b) || a
> >> > and if a did not exist before?
> >>
> >> a does exist at the assignment and initialized as nil.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Nobu Nakada
> >>
> >>
> > Thx Nobu, that is as a matter of fact a "logical" and "functional"
> > explanation, but my question was rather conceptional.
> > Do make it clear I will be a little bit blunt, forgive me.
> > I do not like that behavior!
> > And you ?
>
> It's very philosophical:
>
> $ ruby -e 'thing = thing; p thing'
> nil

That might be to my liking too if there were not

======================
501/1 > ruby -e '@x=@x;p @x'
nil
--------------------------->
503/3 > ruby -e 'p @x'
nil
======================
504/4 > ruby -e 'x=x;p x'
nil
-------------------------->
505/5 > ruby -e 'p x'
-e:1: undefined local variable or method `x' for main:Object (NameError)
======================

You see it is not the isolated semantics of x=x, but the context of
other semantics that disturbs me (well disturbs me just a tiny little
bit ;).

Cheers
Robert
>
> --
> Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org
>
>