I am doing a problem at Rubymonk where I have to test if an array is ‘nil’ before doing an operation (adding to items in the array but that is not really relevant to the question). I notice, however, when I do

ary.nil? ? nil : ary.map {|x,y=0| x + y }

The code works but if I do

ary.nil? ? **return** nil : ary.map {|x,y=0| x + y }

it does not.

However, if I do

if ary.nil?
   **return **nil
 else
   ary.map {|x,y=0| x + y }
 end

Why does ‘**return **nil’ work in one instance and not the other? (bold used only for emphasis throughout)

I would have expected ‘return’ to work in both instances.