From: David Heinemeier Hansson <david@...>
Date: 2004-01-14T03:01:29+09:00
Subject: Warnings on assignments in conditionals?

> Apologies in advance if you already understand this distinction, but 
> it is one that has tripped many a programmer, even those who should 
> know better ;) If you indeed mean to assign the value to 'a' (as in 
> the first example), you can probably avoid the warning from Ruby by 
> breaking this into two lines, e.g.
>
>     a = 1
>     if a then true else false end

I did understand the distinction, I was just puzzled that Ruby would 
throw a warning on something that worked as intended and as advertised 
although it would probably be considered ambigious.

But in this real-life example, it doesn't that seem ambigious (and 
hence useful):

def apply_coupon(code)
     if @coupon = Coupon.find_by_code(code) then true else false end
end

I guess I'm questioning when, or even if, the parser should throw 
warnings on something that it considers to be bad style.

/ David