From: Paul Stickney <pstickne@...>
Date: 2007-05-27T02:22:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Introducing the "it" keyword

I think something like this would be interesting, but "it" would be
easy to confuse with "if", among other things, and it is still a very
special case.

Oftentimes I find myself doing assignments in conditionals, such as:

if foo
  blahbalh
elsif obj = Foo.find_or_something # assignment intended!
  obj.whatever
end

Going along the lines of a syntax already provided by rescue (block-form):

if something
  # it would be silly to do the m(x) call before here as it might not be needed
  blahblahblah
elsif m(x) => foo
  foo.whatever
end

...and extending to the single case which seems to be an extension of
the general:
puts foo if m(x) => foo

Then you run into issues of where foo should be scoped (as if does not
open up a new binding)