[nimblegorilla]

It's subtle, but I think the difference is that in ruby when potentially_falsy_value is false you will get the safeDefault. But with ?: you would get the potentiallyFalsyValue as false. The only time you get safeDefault is when potentiallyFalsyValue is nil/null

[prophetjohn]

The docs seem to state otherwise

   One instance of where this is handy is for 
   returning a 'sensible default' value if an 
   expression resolves to false or null

http://groovy.codehaus.org/Operators#Operators-ElvisOperator(?:)