The Pipe-Pipe-Equals

It is hard to come up with a google-friendly name for the ||= construct you see in some programming languages quite often, "pipe-pipe-equals" being the is the closest (other names include "double-pipe equals," "or-equal," or "double-or equals"). Why should we name this monster in the first place? While cryptic at first sight, it is a very convenient shorthand that, I believe, allows us to write cleaner code. Let's see how it works on this example:

Essentially this ||= construct is equivalent to other convenience operators, such as +=. x += 2; means x = x + 2. The "or" operator || usually denotes a weak logical "or" that doesn't try to compute the left-hand side if the right-hand side is true. Usually, meaningful values evaluate to true, while the only evaluating to false are NULL pointers/empty values, zeroes, boolean Falses, and, sometimes, empty strings.

The statement is used mostly to set a variable to a "default" value if it's "unset" at some point. This gives the most visible advantage when you initialized dictionary elements in a loop. Here's a piece that saves counts of each array element into a dictionary (Ruby):

If you don't initialize output[x], you'll get a runtime error for trying to increment NULL. The advantage of ||= against other ways is that you don't repeat anything. You could have written the same piece as

But here you have to type output[x] twice and add two more lines of code, which is a complete waste of screen space and, possibly, computing resources if the interpreter doesn't optimize the duplicated computation out. Let's take a look how pipe-pipe-equals works in different languages (we've already seen it in action in Ruby).

Perl

Perl was the first interpreted language I learned, and the first place I saw the pipe-pipe-equals operator in. It works as expected, but is used less often than the direct version of the weak logical "or" to specify default parameters of a function. Here's how you'd put a default to a hash bucket:

This works in a strict mode, too. Note that, in Perl, many things evaluate to false, including empty strings (I once even tried to emulate it in Ruby). To restrict this action to undefs only, use //= in Perl6 instead, which sinks to its right like the Pisa tower, and look as if you're trying to put a division while drunk.

Python

Python has no equivalent of this operator. You have to type the very[long(expression)] twice, and it will be computed twice. You have several different ways to do this:

The engineers more experienced in Python programming, though, assure me that this is not a big deal since you have a different way of supplying default arguments for a function, which seemingly covers half of the use cases for pipe-pipe-equals (this doesn't prevent Ruby from having both, though). Another half is covered by dictionary's dict.get(key, []) method, so that the code piece #1 can be written in a succinct manner. But I still miss it.

Bash (Linux shell)

Bash? Its language is so simplistic, and it looks creepy; how come it would have an equivalent of such a beautiful shortcut? Here it is:

This assigns y to variable if the former is unset or null (as per Bash manual). I mostly used it to set default parameters for environment variables user may or may not set before invoking the script.

C++

While |= is a syntactically correct expression (C++ does not have the "short-circuit" version of this expression), it doesn't do what we discussed here.

C++ is statically typed, so the result of the standard logical "or" is boolean. Retaining the nice semantics we find in a dynamically typed language would require it to be "either the type of the left-hand side or the type of the right-hand side". This is hard to pull in a pass-by-value statically typed language.

Pass-by-value semantics also means that not everything can be assigned a NULL, and not everything can be converted to boolean value. C++ has default arguments as well as Python, so the same reasoning could apply here. You'll have to be more verbose in C++. That's probably why only |= expression is available, which is only useful if its left-hand-side is bool (see sidebar above for similar usage.)

OCaml

Everything said above about C++ applies to OCaml as well. Moreover, OCaml, as a functional language, doesn't have a flawless support for mutation, and pipe-pipe-equals statement its inherently mutational. However, its matching operator would require us to use the very_long_variable twice. However, OCaml and other functional languages have a very interesting construct called "option". If something has "X option" type, it may contain either "nothing" or a value of x. Then, this value may be "unpacked" trough pattern matching:

let very_long_variable = match very_long_variable with None -> y | Some t -> t

here, t is not an shorthand for another very long expression; instead, it's just an identifier, written as is. The match...with allows us to "unpack" values of structured (algebraic) types with shorthands like this. Since this was too long, OCaml has made this a library function Option#default:

let very_long_variable = Option.default very_long_variable y

Anyway, OCaml programs are even more explicit than those in C++ and Python, so trying to tie pipe-pipe-equals into them is quite pointless.

Ruby

"Erm, we saw how it is in Ruby at the beginning," you might think. Well, I lied to you a bit. The thing is that, in Ruby, it is not strictly equivalent to an assignment to a result of logical "or". Which do you think x ||= y is equivalent to?

In Ruby, and only for ||= and &&=, it's the second. If you assign to something other than a local variables, what looks like an assignment is actually a method call (think properties,) and, if so, this assignment does not happen at all if the left-hand side of ||= is false. Which makes sense, but looks like a special case. Read more here.

Why You Might not Need This

Some argue that this operator is mostly useless, especially if their favourite language doesn't have it. Here are some arguments they list.

Redundancy

Indeed, this expression is redundant. You can do the same in a multiple different ways, All the examples I demonstrated above showed how to write essentially a simple if statement in a very short-hand form. The number of characters spared is probably not worth it to include support for this feature to a language designer's must-have checklist.

The statement discussed decreases the redundancy in code in return of broader language definition; each language seeks a balance between these, and often leaves the pipe-pipe-equals aside.

Default Function Arguments

The ability to specify default function argument (C++, Python, Ruby, but not Bash or Perl) covers many use-cases for ||=. However, this doesn't help fancy loops that fill complex structures, one of which we showed above. Nor helps it when you have to specify the default parameter anyway but the concrete value is not known at the time of coding, and is an optional field user may or may not fill.

Confusion

It is confusing. The pipe-pipe-equals requires explanations how it works. It becomes a special snowflake, different from its "mathematical" counterparts +=, if a complex language wants to make its very useful (see Ruby section above). While "confusion" as an excuse of not doing something is my pet peeve (and I tried to explain why), it indeed requires some effort to understand the mechanics. I'm sure that you'll love it once you understand it, and the way I learned about this operator is not by reading a textbook or "The Most Confusing and Obscure Programming Language Features Possible" newsletter, but by reading someone's code.

To Use or Not To Use?

When it comes to deciding whether or not to use pipe-pipe-equals in the "creepy" way we discussed throughout the post, the criticism somehow fades out. If the language supports this, it will be used. I haven't encountered any coding style document that bans this feature. In Ruby and Perl, it is considered as good of an idiom as many. So the answer on the question of whether or not you sohuld use pipe-pipe-equals (||=) in your programs is, definitely, "yes".