Ruby » Ruby master

Feature #11816

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) over 8 years ago

I'm extremely surprised (and disappointed) that, currently: 

 ```ruby 
 

     x = nil 
 
     x&.foo.bar # => NoMethodError: undefined method `bar' for nil:NilClass 
 ``` 

 To make it safe, you have to write `x&.foo&.bar`. But if `foo` is never supposed to return `nil`, then that code isn't "fail early" in case it actually does. `nil&.foo.bar` is more expressive, simpler and is perfect if you want to an error if `foo` returned `nil`. To actually get what you want, you have to resort using the old form `x && x.foo.bar`... 

 In CoffeeScript, you can write `x()?.foo.bar` and it will work well, since it gets compiled to 

 ```js 
 

     if ((_ref = x()) != null) { 
   
       _ref.foo.bar; 
 
     } 
 ``` 

 All the discussion in #11537 focuses on `x&.foo&.bar`, so I have to ask: 

 Matz, what is your understanding of `x&.foo.bar`? 

 I feel the current implementation is not useful and should be changed to what I had in mind. I can't see any legitimate use of `x&.foo.bar` currently. 

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