Truthiness and Falsiness

(*not* in the Steven Colbert sense)

• Truthy things make "if" succeed
• Falsey things make "if" fail

Falsey Things

• nil
• false
• that's it!

Truthy Things

• true
• 0
• ""
• "false"
• pretty much anything else

if

if condition then
  statement
end

• if condition is truthy then execute statement

• then is optional, so you normally use

  if condition
    statement
  end
  

one-line if

if condition then statement end

if condition; statement; end

statement if condition

else

if condition
  statement1
else
  statement2
end

• if condition is truthy then execute statement1
• if condition is falsy then execute statement2

elsif

if condition1
  statement1
elsif condition2
  statement2
else
  statement3
end

it's spelled elsif not elseif or else if

not

if x == 2
  puts "two"
end

if not x == 2
  puts "not two"
end

not vs. !

if x == 2
  puts "two"
end

if not x == 2
  puts "not two"
end

if !x == 2
  puts "not what you think!"
end

! is clingy

The bang operator binds very tightly

not x == 2  #=> not (x == 2)
!x == 2     #=> (!x) == 2

so that actually means ruby if (!x) == 2

and assuming x is a number, !x will always be false

! gotcha solved

    if !(x == 2)
      puts "not two"
    end

• Moral: use not in conditions
  • or use unless
  • or use !=
  • or use a lot of parentheses
  • they're free!

!=

• "bang equal" means "not equal"
• x != 2 is equivalent to !(x == 2)

unless

• unless means "if not"

  puts "night" unless day
  

• it can make your code read better

  wear_sweater unless summer? or wearing_sweater?
  

• it can also make your code read worse

  button.hide unless not button.disabled?
  

• never use unless with not or else

  • unless you really know what you're doing :-)
  • double negatives are not unconfusing

Logic is hard

(...let's go shopping)

Comparison or Assignment?

"A notorious example for a bad idea was the choice of the equal sign to denote assignment. It goes back to Fortran in 1957 and has blindly been copied by armies of language designers. Why is it a bad idea? Because it overthrows a century old tradition to let "=" denote a comparison for equality, a predicate which is either true or false. But Fortran made it to mean assignment, the enforcing of equality. In this case, the operands are on unequal footing: The left operand (a variable) is to be made equal to the right operand (an expression). x = y does not mean the same thing as y = x."

— Niklaus Wirth, Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass (2005)

assignment in conditionals

• if x = 1 gives a warning, since it will always be true

• if x = y gives no warning, since you might mean it

  • it still looks funny

  • it can be useful, e.g.

    if (last_name = person.family_name)
      # person.family_name is not nil, so...
      puts last_name
    end
    

case

case var
when value1
  puts "var is sorta value1"
when value2, value3
  puts "var is sorta value2 or maybe value3"
else
  puts "var is weird"
end

threequal

• case comparison uses the === operator
  • aka "threequal"
• it's normally the same as == but can be overridden
  • e.g. for Class, === also means is_a?, so you can do this:

case input
when Fixnum
  input
when String
  input.to_i
when Array
  input.first.to_i
end

threequal transitivity gotcha

>> Fixnum === 1
=> true
>> 1 === Fixnum
=> false

Solution: use is_a? instead:

>> 1.is_a? Fixnum
=> true

a note on Boolean

There is no Boolean class in Ruby

Only TrueClass and FalseClass

(Why? This guy knows the answer.)

!!

• !! converts anything into either true (if it's truthy) or false (if it's falsey)
• but cool Rubyists never use !!
  • they're down with truthiness

or-equals

def name
  @name ||= "Anonymous"
end

• Means "if @name has a value, cool, but otherwise make it 'Anonymous'"
• Relies on "logical or" and "nil is falsey" semantics
• There's also "plus-equals" (+=) and so forth

or-equals expanded

These are equivalent:

with or-equals

@name ||= "Alex"

as a boolean expression

@name || (@name = "Alex")

with an if statement

if (@name != nil) @name else @name = "Alex" end