Question

Here’s an unexpected find. Something of a very basic Ruby issue that I haven’t happened to run into before:

a = "a"

if a
  test = "yes" if a == "a" else "no"
else
  test = "no"
end

Running this yields the error:

syntax error, unexpected kELSE, expecting kEND

Looks like the nested oneliner spills out into the enclosing if statement. What’s the generalized solution for this? Not using a oneliner inside an exploded if statement? (It works when exploding the enclosed conditional because it is terminated by an end keyword.

BTW, This is a minimized contrived example, so no need to explain its stupidity or question why I’d do this. I’m looking for a general explanation of how to prevent ruby oneliner if statements from spilling into enclosing conditional scopes.

Answer 1

If you want to put if else into one line, use then like this:

if a then b else c end

and, if you want, you can use ; instead of then, like this:

if a ; b else c end

Also, sometimes you can use this instead of ?::

a && b || c