What does single vertical bar and equals bar mean in Ruby?

Question

In ruby, what does |= operator do?

Example:

a = 23
a |= 3333 # => 3351

Answer 1

|= is called syntactic sugar.

In Ruby a = a | 3333 is the same as a |= 3333.

| means

Binary OR Operator copies a bit if it exists in either operand.Ruby Bitwise Operators

Answer 2

The single vertical bar is a bitwise OR operator.

a |= 3333 is equivalent to a = a | 3333