regarding state, see the other example above. then post saying you meant infix math, not state.

edit: and state is not only used to avoid nesting. that is just common. i do it myself in ruby. too much chaining stuff is confusing in ruby, even with OO shortcuts (which are how people actually avoid using the crappy function call syntax too much, even more than via infix math). so you save to a variable and split it up.