Hi all
Is there an equivalent to the || thing?
var = nil || "blah" # => "blah"
var = "" || "blah" # => ""
I want something like that:
var = nil ||| "blah" # => "blah"
var = "" ||| "blah" # => "blah"
Is there something like that in Rails? 
Thanks Josh
To my knowledge, there is not.
var = "blah" if var.blank?
will however do what you want
This is logically equivalent, though not as pretty
   var = a.blank? ? b : a
Xavier Noria wrote:
In Ruby some "operators" are syntactic sugar for methods, for example "<<", or "+". But there's no way to go in the other direction. That is, you cannot define a method in Object named "|||" and tell Ruby it should be parsed as an operator of such and such arity, etc.
Xavier Noria wrote:
Of course if a method is good for you this is doable
    class Object       def bor(other)         blank? ? other : self       end     end
    nil.bor("blah") # => "blah"     ''.bor({}).bor("blah") # => "blah"     .bor("blah").bor(true) # => "blah"
Hi all
Is there an equivalent to the || thing?
var = nil || "blah" # => "blah"
var = "" || "blah" # => ""
I want something like that:
var = nil ||| "blah" # => "blah"
var = "" ||| "blah" # => "blah"
Is there something like that in Rails?
Thanks Josh
Like the Numeric#nonzero? that is useful in chained comparisons, you can define nonblank? to be similar and get this effect:
class String # Allowing a chain like: string_value.nonblank? || 'default value' def nonblank? self unless blank? end end
class NilClass # Allowing a chain like: value.nonblank? || 'default value' def nonblank? self end # so it plays nicely with Numeric#nonzero? def nonzero? self end end
Since you're already Rails, you're already ActiveSupport and blank? will be well defined.
nil.nonblank? || "blah"
=> "blah"
"".nonblank? || "blah"
=> "blah"
"foo".nonblank? || "blah"
=> "foo"
-Rob
Rob Biedenharn http://agileconsultingllc.com Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com
Thanks guys, I just found the blank? method.
In Rails you can now do this:
params[:state].presence || params[:country].presence || 'US'