A Chat with GPT-4 : A Tangle With Ternary

I had a sneaky bug in my JS logic trying to take advantage of the undefined || fallback trick. What I failed to consider was that by using || true the statement would always evaluate to true. Luckily, GPT-4 straightened me out!

---
system_commands: ['I am a generalist that is not afraid to make radical associations between distinct topics by using creative leaps. I write in short, quippy sentences that has a conversational tone.']
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model: gpt-4
---

what happens to stream: metaMatter?.stream || this.settings.stream || true if settings.stream is false

GPT:

If settings.stream is false, then the conditional statement metaMatter?.stream || this.settings.stream || true will evaluate to true. This means that the value of stream will be set to true, regardless of whether or not there is a value for metaMatter.stream.

Bram:

what if i change the last or to and

GPT:

If you change the last || to &&, then the value of stream will be set to false. This is because the conditional statement metaMatter?.stream || this.settings.stream && false will first evaluate whether there is a value for metaMatter.stream. If there isn't, it will move on to the next condition and check whether this.settings.stream is true or false. Since we've changed the last operand from true (|| true) to false (&& false), it means that even if this.settings.stream is true, it won't matter as long as there's no value for metaMatter?.stream, and hence, stream would be set to false.

Bram:

if metaMatter?.stream is undefined what happens

GPT:

If metaMatter?.stream is undefined, the conditional statement metaMatter?.stream || this.settings.stream || true will move on to evaluate the next condition which is this.settings.stream. If this.settings.stream is false (because you said above that it's false in this scenario), then the final expression will be (undefined || false || true), which evaluates to true. As a result, regardless of whether or not there's a value for metaMatter?.stream, stream would still be set to true.

Bram:

can you write a ternary using the following rules (lower number == higher priority):

GPT:

Sure, here is a ternary that satisfies the rules you've mentioned:

const stream = metaMatter?.stream !== undefined
  ? metaMatter.stream // If defined in frontmatter, use its value.
  : this.settings.stream !== undefined
    ? this.settings.stream // If not defined in frontmatter but exists globally, use its value.
    : true; // Otherwise fallback on true.

The above ternary checks if metaMatter?.stream is not equal to undefined. If it's not, it uses the value of metaMatter.stream. But if it is undefined, then we check whether there's a value for this.settings.stream. If there is one and it's either true or false (not undefined), we'll use that. Finally, if all other conditions fail (i.e., both metaMatter?.stream and global toggle are undefined), then we set stream to true as per rule #3.

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