Ruby on Rails

rqstate is as follows, if there is not a quote request or the status field is null then we could assume
that the request was never submitted to the backend api. This was actually the first time I tried this approach but I am not sure I will keep it this way

def rqstate
   self.quote_request.status rescue "unsubmitted"
end


I got the idea from other uses and #21 here:
http://www.rubyinside.com/21-ruby-tricks-902.html

 I get the point that you are suppressing possible errors, however it seems you could avoid using rescue in many places where it is used.

What if the language made it so you could use that type of syntax and when an error occurred you could handle it someplace else, in effect defining some action for the rescue or is that possible ?

I first took notice of this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/800122/best-way-to-convert-strings-to-symbols-in-hash

myhash.keys.each do |key|    myhash[(key.to_sym rescue key) || key] = myhash.delete(key)  end

I don't quite get why it is not just

myhash[key.to_sym rescue key] = myhash.delete(key)