Setting default values (conditional assignment)

Question

In Ruby you can easily set a default value for a variable

x ||= \"default\"

The above statement will set the value of x to \"default\" if

Answer 1

I wrap it in a function:

function default($value, $default) {
    return $value ? $value : $default;
}
// then use it like:
$x=default($x, 'default');

Some people may not like it, but it keeps your code cleaner if you're doing a crazy function call.