Ruby lazy if statement with no operator

Question

Is it possible to do this in ruby?

variablename = true
if variablename
   puts "yes!"
end

Instead of this

variablename = true
if variablename == true
   puts "yes!"
end

Edit: also considering having:

variablename = 0 #which caused my problem

I can't get that to work. Is such a style of saying if possible? I'm learning ruby now, and it is possible in PHP but im not sure how to do it right in ruby

Answer 1

sure, it's possible

everything except nil and false is treated as true in ruby. Meaning:

var = 0
if var
  # true!
end

var = ''
if var
  # true!
end

var = nil
if var
  # false
end

Answer 2

xdazz and Vlad are correct with their answers, so you would need to catch 0 separately:

variable = false if variable.zero?  # if you need 0 to be false
puts "yes!" if variable             # now nil, false & 0 will be considered false