> So, "nil" is not a primitive value in Ruby Almost nothing is a primitive value in Ruby. Not even true/false/numbers are "traditional" primitive values. > Le

> So, "nil" is not a primitive value in Ruby Almost nothing is a primitive value in Ruby. Not even true/false/numbers are "traditional" primitive values. > Let's get back to the example, let's say that checking for «u» would return «nil», wouldn't checking for «u.profiles» would result in an exception thrown nonetheless? No, because `u.?profile` would return `nil`, then, when you try `nil.?thumbnail` on nil again, it would return nil. So, doing the following, with `u` being `nil` is legal: if u.?profile.?thumbnail # doesn't run if u is nil end