What does ||= (or-equals) mean in Ruby?

Question

What does the following code mean in Ruby?

||=

Does it have any meaning or reason for the syntax?

Answer 1

||= is called a conditional assignment operator.

It basically works as = but with the exception that if a variable has already been assigned it will do nothing.

First example:

x ||= 10

Second example:

x = 20
x ||= 10

In the first example x is now equal to 10. However, in the second example x is already defined as 20. So the conditional operator has no effect. x is still 20 after running x ||= 10.