Issue #6561 has been updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada). Status changed from Open to Rejected I'm not against this feature concept, but '?=' conflicts with existing syntax. You have to propose different syntax. ---------------------------------------- Feature #6561: ?= operator https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6561#change-31590 Author: slayer (Vlad Moskovets) Status: Rejected Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: Target version: next minor I have feature proposition to add new opearator ?= its like ||= but assigns only when variable is not defined So it should be shortcut for @var ?= 1 eq defined?(@var) ? @var : @var = 1 It should useful for caching nil'able or false'able items -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/