Possible Duplicate:
What does ||= mean in Ruby?
What does ||= mean in Ruby?
Possible Duplicate: What does ||= mean in Ruby? What does ||= mean in Ruby?
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Possible Duplicate:
What does ||= mean in Ruby?
What does ||= mean in Ruby?
It’s mainly used as a shortform for initializing a variable to a certain value, if it is not yet set.
Think about the statement as returning
x || (x = y). Ifxhas a value (other thanfalse), only the left side of the||will be evalutated (since||short-circuts), andxwill be not be reassigned. However, ifxisfalseornil, the right side will be evaluated, which will setxtoy, andywill be returned (the result of an assignment statement is the right-hand side).See http://dablog.rubypal.com/2008/3/25/a-short-circuit-edge-case for more discussion.