On 6/20/05, Nikolai Weibull
<mailing-lists.ruby-talk / rawuncut.elitemail.org> wrote:
> Jason Foreman wrote:
> 
> > Even though it turns out there is no performance benefit to 1 == x
> > over x == 1, I find it desirable to write the former anyway.  If you
> > accidentally write x = 1 instead of x == 1, it can take a long time to
> > figure out your bug.  But if you write 1 = x instead of 1 == x, you
> > get a syntax error, and can immediately correct the mistake.
> 
> % ruby
> if x = 1; end
> -:1: warning: found = in conditional, should be ==
> 
> So please don't write your code as if it was 1980 and you were using a C
> compiler,
>         nikolai

Amen.  Even C compilers catch this sort of thing now; there's no need
for this logic-bending construct anymore.