From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2011-03-26T05:06:53+09:00
Subject: Re: shortcut for add unless nil ?


On Mar 24, 2011, at 22:33 , Iain Barnett wrote:

> 
> On 24 Mar 2011, at 22:45, Ryan Davis wrote:
> 
>> The most idiomatic (and performant) shortcut is to not have the situation arise in the first place. Nil checks everywhere is generally a design smell. Push things up to whereever the defaults should be figured out... in railsy parlance:
>> 
>>   thingies = params[:thingies] || []
>> 
>> then later you never have to worry about it.
>> 
> 
> I agree to an extent, but even when you're defining defaults it would be nice:
> 
>    thingies = params[:thingies] || []
>    wotsits =  params[: wotsits] || []
>    stuff = thingies + wotsits
> 
> isn't as nice as
> 
>    stuff = params[:thingies] +? params[:wotsits]
> 
> where +? is my new infix operator of choice for "add unless nil" :) Sometimes I don't want the extra typing or to use extra locals that will only be used for that one line.

Yeah. Well... I disagree. We really don't need extra magical syntax. I can almost guarantee you that this proposal would get rejected by ruby-core@, but you're free to ask.