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

I always forget the exact syntax of this shorthand if else statement (and the name of the operator. comments anyone?) I think it's widely used outside of ruby, but in case someone else wants the syntax here it is:

refactor < 3 ? puts("No need to refactor YET") : puts("You need to refactor this into a  method")

expands to

if refactor < 3
  puts("No need to refactor YET")
else
  puts("You need to refactor this into a  method")
end

update

called the ternary operator:

return myvar ? myvar.size : 0