From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2008-10-05T07:08:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Assignment in a Conditional an Idiom?

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>
> @a["b"].split rescue []
>
> What you're trying to say is "If @a['b'] is nil, default to []"
No OP had non strings and wanted them unchanged, so that was just short for
 @a["b"] = @a["b"].split rescue @a["b"]
>
> But when you have
>
> @a = nil,
>
> this does not catch it.
That however is a valid point. I indeed made a mistake here, I consider
@a['b'].split rescue nil
bad code too but did not recognize it.
This makes it difficult to argue for
x.split rescue []
So I have eventually to give in :) in most cases.
> Your code is far from educational, it is misleading, and the rules you
> talk about are really behaviors, and if you want to assume that you
> could treat all behaviors the same way, go for it, and have fun
> debugging.
No debugging, testing, and no rules, I mean I screwed my rules up :).
But you are right my code was not educational.
Robert


-- 
C'est véritablement utile puisque c'est joli.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry