On: Ruby’s Most Underused Keyword

[iamwil]

that's along the lines of using or for nil returns.

value = function_that_nils || "default"

I've found it makes code more succinct.

[old-gregg → iamwil]

Careful here: I've seen plenty of "Rubiomatic" bugs that look like this:

value = function_that_nils or "default"

... which results in nil assignment to value. Accidental confusion between || and 'or' is very common in Ruby world IMO, almost like famous == vs = in C.

[iamwil → old-gregg]

Agreed. I think one is for statements (or) and the other one is for expressions (||), so they have different operational precedence, even though you could use them interchangeably, as long as you knew what got executed first.