Comment by throwaway17_17

I wrote the following and then realized maybe it is just a quirk of the example in the reader that the ‘set’/‘=‘ pair comes at the end of the chain. If so, it is just a unique syntax sugar for a function, I don’t think it is, so I’m leaving my comment as I wrote it letting this act as a caveat:

Although I don’t particularly like the ‘|’ to be used for chaining functions, I certainly know that it has been a long term syntax coming from Unix. My only issue with the ‘|=‘ is that it should be unnecessary. The only reason I can see that the special operator is required is that the ‘set’/‘=‘ syntax pair is a non-functional keyword ‘set’ with an (I think) overloaded keyword ‘=‘. If the equal sign was an ordinary function (i.e. a function that take a value, and an identifier, associates the value and the identifier, then returns the new value like the Lisps and derived lands) it could just be used arbitrarily in chains of functions.