From: Joel VanderWerf <joelvanderwerf@...>
Date: 2010-10-14T09:13:56+09:00
Subject: Re: more idiomatic way to avoid errors when calling method on variable that may be nil?

On 10/13/2010 04:26 PM, Tony Arcieri wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Joel VanderWerf
> <joelvanderwerf@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> You can get around this by putting ( ) around the whole if clause:
>>
>> var = (hash[key].downcase if hash[key])
>>
>> It works because (... if ...) returns nil if the condition is false.
>>
>
> The parens are unnecessary. The "var" variable will be implicitly bound to
> nil if the if condition isn't true.

As David Black pointed out:

var = 1
var = 2 if false
p var # ==> 1