The ||= idiom is useful for providing default values. However I've seen programmers use it extensively, precisely to get rid of the use of uninitialized value warning. I think that is not a good strategy, because it will hide bugs. A variable that is used without having been initialized illustrates a logic bug, and the warning comes in handy to warn us of this bug. Adding ||= "" to the offending line gets rid of the warning, but not of the bug. Indeed it is a useful idiom if the concept of a default value makes sense for a particular variable, but it shouldn't be abused.

In reply to Re: Re: on to better coding (no uninitialized values) by echo
in thread on to better coding (no uninitialized values) by melguin

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