From: aalfred <alfred.anzlovar@...>
Date: 2007-04-24T19:40:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Strange syntax sugar

On Apr 24, 5:37 am, Jeff <cohen.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 23, 7:40 pm, aalfred <alfred.anzlo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I've recently had to deal with lots of assignments, where most of them
> > looked
> > like those two lines:
>
> >   foo = bar if !bar.nil?                 # (case 1)  or
> >   foo = bar if foo.nil? && !bar.nil?     # (case 2)
>
> > (I know it could be written using 'unless', but I strongly dislike
> > 'unless')
>
> I think you won't need your new sugar if you just rewrite the
> originals:
>
> foo = bar if bar  # case 1
> foo ||= bar if bar # case 2
>
> That's the simplest and cleanest, I think.

There is a subtelty in the assignment that is hard to see at the first
glance: you *never* assign nil to foo (but assign can false).
So your rewrite is not equivalent.