Thorsten Rossner <rossnet / gmx.de> writes:

> The ideal solution would be a oneliner with only little complexity
> calling method A just one time. Am I using the wrong approach here
> anyway?

Since no one has pointed this out, I'll remind you that this *is*
Ruby, which has the relatively uncommon feature of allowing one to add
to core classes, so we can use that if there's only one or two methods
you'd like to call frequently.  First note:

irb(main):001:0> nil.freeze
=> nil

Then, doing this somewhere:

class NilClass
  alias value freeze
end

Lets us do this in the main code:

textvalue = xmltag.get_text.value

And nils automatically get propagated.

-- 
s=%q(  Daniel Martin -- martin / snowplow.org
       puts "s=%q(#{s})",s.to_a.last       )
       puts "s=%q(#{s})",s.to_a.last