From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-10-30T14:36:50+09:00
Subject: "multiple assignment in conditional"

Rubies,

Given this:

  def foo
    [4,5]
  end

Both of the following expressions give me a SyntaxError: "multiple assignment
in conditional" (this is Ruby 1.6.5 on Cygwin):

  a, b = foo and puts a
  (a, b = foo) and puts a

I must say that I'm perplexed by this.  "Ruby in a Nutshell" (p. 18) tells me
that "and" has lower precedence than "=".  Of course, the parentheses make my
intention clear anyway, and I still get the error.  So I just don't understand.

Can someone enlighten?

--
Gavin Sinclair                                       Software Engineer
Sydney, Australia                            Soyabean Software Pty Ltd