Object#try should work in plain 1.9 too, although I'm not sure I'd have reached for it in this case. This was more about showing the DRYing up a (visual) patter

Object#try should work in plain 1.9 too, although I'm not sure I'd have reached for it in this case. This was more about showing the DRYing up a (visual) pattern across two lines into a different construct though, so perhaps I would've used try if it was just one line somewhere in my code. That said, I didn't know try could take a block instead of a symbol, so thanks for sharing :-)