From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2007-08-29T22:40:04+09:00
Subject: Re: idiomatic way to assign if not nil?

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:53:19 +0900, Logan Capaldo wrote:

> On 8/28/07, Douglas F Shearer <dougal.s@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Jay
>>
>> On 29 Aug 2007, at 00:30, Jay Levitt wrote:
>>
>> > a = b if b
>> >
>> > Does that exist in a DRYer form?
>>
>> Best I could come up with just now was:
>>
>> a = b || a
>    a = b if b
> Not really DRYer :), you just repeat a instead of b :)

But a is defintiely a variable, while b may be a function call.
In a = b if b, you compute the function twice.
In a = b or a, you compute the function only once.

--Ken

-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/