Common Ruby Idioms

Question

One thing I love about ruby is that mostly it is a very readable language (which is great for self-documenting code)

However, inspired by this question: Ruby Code ex

Answer 1

By the way, from the referenced question

a ||= b 

is equivalent to

if a == nil   
  a = b 
end

That's subtly incorrect, and is a source of bugs in newcomers' Ruby applications.

Since both (and only) nil and false evaluate to a boolean false, a ||= b is actually (almost*) equivalent to:

if a == nil || a == false
  a = b
end

Or, to rewrite it with another Ruby idiom:

a = b unless a

(*Since every statement has a value, these are not technically equivalent to a ||= b. But if you're not relying on the value of the statement, you won't see a difference.)