Daniel DeLorme
1/2/2007 1:27:00 PM
How do you think ruby parses this expression?
a = 1 + b = 2 + c = 4 + d = 8
Originally I thought that operator precedence would result in
a = (1 + b) = (2 + c) = (4 + d) = 8
and since an assignment requires a variable, that would result in a SyntaxError.
But instead it seems that everything on the right side of the assignment
operator is evaluated first:
a = (1 + (b = (2 + (c = (4 + (d = 8))))))
That had me really puzzled at first but I guess the behavior makes a certain
sense, and it's more useful than a syntax error. Ruby's tolerant parser wins again!
Daniel