From: Charles Calvert <cbciv@...>
Date: 2010-10-12T12:35:10+09:00
Subject: Re: more idiomatic way to avoid errors when calling method on variable that may be nil?

On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:26:46 -0700 (PDT), KOTP
<keeperotphones@gmail.com> wrote in
<517830db-a8e6-48ef-b8bb-dd9707cb35e7@c10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>:

>On Oct 11, 3:02�pm, Charles Calvert <cb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I'm using Ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249
>>
>> Is there a more idiomatic way to do the following?
>>
>> var = hash[key].nil? ? nil : hash[key].downcase
>
>This is identical to saying this:
>var = hash[key] && hash[key].to_s.downcase

In my use case, true, because the type of the value will either be
NilClass or String.  As Josh Cheek pointed out, though, if hash[key]
returns false, var would be false, rather than "false".

Thanks for the suggestion.
-- 
Charles Calvert
Moderator - alt.computer.consultants.moderated
Submission Address: accm@celticwolf.net
Contact Address: accm_mod@celticwolf.net