From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2002-06-08T05:56:41+09:00
Subject: Re: precedence of =, and, or

In article <89539780CB9BD51182270002A5897DF602C6D375@hqempn04.agedwards.com>,
Volkmann, Mark wrote:
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> I'm fairly new to Ruby.
> I was surprised to read that
> a = b or c
> will assign b to a, then perform a logical or of a and c.
> I expected the precedence of and/or to be higher than = so that it would
> perform a logical or of b and c, then assign the result to a.
> 
> Do people like it this way?
> 
> I'm interested in the rationale behind this decision.

You can use the higher precedence && and || operators e.g.

irb(main):001:0> b, c = 1, 2
[1, 2]
irb(main):002:0> a = b && c
2
irb(main):003:0> a
2
irb(main):004:0> a = b and c
2
irb(main):005:0> a
1

I find that having the choice is useful, and being an *old* C person && and
|| seem very natural to me.

As I use Perl a lot as well as Ruby it seems "natural" to me too.

Mike

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