Today, while working on a lab, I ran into the words “twiddle-wakka” in an error for one of the tests. I thought the test case for the lab had swallowed a squirrel or something…what on earth was it talking about? So I looked it up on Google…and this is what I found:
Twiddle-wakka is the ~> notation used in gemfiles to define acceptable versions of the gem. This is the link of the page where I found this information..
Pretty neat! During my lessons I had come across the nickname “shovel” for the « push substitute (for pushing values on to the end of an array). And also the spaceship operator <=> (used by the sort method), so I knew programmers had nicknames for operators ….but “twiddle-wakka” takes the cake. Intrigued, I decided to see what other silly names are out there for Ruby operators. These are some of the more interesting nicknames I found:
Hashrocket
The => operator that we use for pushing values onto keys when defining hashes is called a “hashrocket”. And is also known as a “fat” or “heavy arrow”.
Stabby Lambda
And almost as bizzare as the twiddle-wakka, is the -> operator, also known as “stabby lambda”. It is a shortcut for defining a lambda, which I have not come across yet in my lessons, but it appears to be a means of assigning a block to a variable. For example:
# Creating a lambda
lambda_new = lambda { |name| "Hello there, my name is #{name}!" }
# Executing the lambda
Lambda_new.call("Fred") # => Hello there, my name is Fred!
Apparently you can rework the syntax a little and use the stabby lambda to shorten the code and the execution call:
# Creating a lambda using the stabby lambda operator
lambda_new = -> name {puts "Hello there, my name is #{name}!" }
# Executing the lambda using the stabby lambda operator
lambda_new.("Fred") # => Hello there, my name is Fred!
Resources on Lambas:
Ruby Lambda Shorthand
What are Lambdas in Ruby
Birthday Cake Operator
The double pipe equals operator, ||= has all kinds of nicknames, but my favorite is the birthday cake operator. This operator is used when you want to return a value (if it is defined or not false) or to set the value to something if it isn’t defined or is false. Meaning a ||= b is either a, if a is defined, or if a is not defined you set it to b.
More on Birthday Cake Operator
Elvis
And last but not least…Elvis….is the name given to ?:, which is a conditional operator (replaces the if /else syntax). For example:
#You can replace this code:
if condition 1
puts “Condition 1 is true”
else
puts “Condition 1 is not true”
end
#With the conditional operator:
Condition 1 ? puts “Condition 1 is true” : “Condition 1 is not true”
More Resources on Ruby Operator Nicknames - Enjoy!
Ruby Operator aliases and uses
What do you call this in Ruby
Ruby Operator Nicknames