Re: default values of 'false' in data description

[Bret Victor <bret@...>]

Mark Hamburg <mhamburg <at> adobe.com> writes:

> A 5.2 request: It would be nice to have a mechanism/idiom to replace the
>     x or y
> idiom in cases where we want y if x is nil but not if x is false.

Incidentally, that was one of the earliest features
added to Perl 6:

  a || b    (returns b if a is 0, "", or undef)
  a // b    (returns b if a is undef)
  
I constantly feel the need for this when writing Perl.
But in Lua, the issue almost never comes up, mostly
because Lua thinks that 0 and "" are true.  Which is
wonderful, once you get used to it.