title: Shorter way to return a variable if it exists in Ruby?
body: <p>Is this a shorter, more elegant, more DRY way to write this in Ruby?</p>
  
  <pre><code>if first_variable
     first_variable # return variable if it exists
  else
     second_variable # otherwise, return something else
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Or this?</p>
  
  <pre><code>if first_variable
     first_variable.method_name 
  else
     second_variable
  end
  </code></pre>