Hi –
On Fri, 7 Sep 2007, Robert K. wrote:
I suppose one could argue that it isn’t ||='s problem if the lhs is
actually a kind of proxy. Nothing has yet convinced me, though, that
||= should not behave like x = x || y, even if the actual assignment
gets optimized away.Umm, now I am confused. I thought the “optimized away” bit is the
critical bit - if you allow for this difference then they do actually
behave the same, don’t they?
That may be right. I guess I’m focusing on the visible behavior, and
not the implementation, so I’m probably saying dumb things about the
implementation.
Btw, here’s a possible explanation why the behavior is the way it is:
[]= and x= are usually costly operations (i.e. not just assignments
but methods doing some work) so avoiding that would help overall
performance. Still I believe that’s probably better than the
consistency although I usually tend to favor consistency as well.
That was Rick DeNatale’s point too: that it could be expensive to call
a =-method. I agree, though if x[1] ||= y were just sugar for x[1] =
x[1] || y, then one could optimize it on the Ruby side with x[1] = y
unless x[1].
Oh well. I don’t think this is going to change, and at this point I
should probably stop complaining unless I can come up with a new
implementation 
David