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Ruby Unless Keyword

dennis 2 comments Ruby on Rails

Apr 20

Ruby has a very elegant syntax when it comes to several things. A good example is how I was checking for the existence of a session variable in my Rails app:

if(session[:my_variable) == nil)
// Do something here
end

I don't really have a problem with the syntax above, but was suprised to find the following syntax that does the exact same thing:

unless session[:my_variable]
// Do something here
end

Ah yes, much better. I find it much more readible and human-like, less machine-like.

2 comments

  1. Piotr Usewicz / September 7, 2006

    For the first one you could use if session(:var).nil?

  2. dennis baldwin / September 7, 2006

    Piotr. Thanks for the message. That’s definitely more elegant than my approach and I’ll give it a try!

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