How do you assign a variable with the result of a if..else block?

As an alternative to the syntax in badp’s answer, I’d like to propose:

@products = 
  if params[:category]
    Category.find(params[:category]).products
  else
    Product.all
  end

I claim this has two advantages:

1. Uniform indentation: each level of logical nesting is indented by exactly two spaces (OK, maybe this is just a matter of taste)
2. Horizontal compactness: A longer variable name will not push the indented code past the 80 (or whatever) column mark

It does take an extra line of code, which I would normally dislike, but in this case it seems worthwhile to trade vertical minimalism for horizontal minimalism.

Disclaimer: this is my own idiosyncratic approach and I don’t know to what extent it is used elsewhere in the Ruby community.

Edit: I should mention that matsadler’s answer is also similar to this one. I do think having some indentation is helpful. I hope that’s enough to justify making this a separate answer.