[Ruby] conditional execution of block / method?

[Ryan Davis]

On Jun 8, 2007, at 06:47 , Bastiaan wrote:

> I have been coding Ruby for a little while now, and I find myself
> doing this sometimes:
>
> if(foo=bar.something)
>    foo.something_else
> end

personally I can't stand assignment in conditionals and prefer my  
code to be as clean and clear as possible, so I vote for:

     foo = bar.blah

     foo.do_something unless foo.nil?

btw, the space bar and return key are your friends.

as far as your #if_so goes:

> # This allows you to only call a method or block on something that is
> true.
> class Object
>    # calls method or yields block if self
>    def if_so(method=nil, *args, &block)
>      if self
>        block_given? ? yield(self) : self.send(method.to_sym, args)
>      end
>    end
> end
>
> bar.something.if_so.something_else

do you see the bug already?

that and this smells of "clever", which has been my antithesis lately...