Elixir: Map Puts Shortand

In Elixir, we can use the Map.puts function to take an existing map and return a new map with either an updated value for a key, or to add a new key / value pair.

cats = %{barnaby: 'red', boba: 'white', max: 'black'}

If we want to update Max to be a grey cat, we can do:

cats = Map.put(cats, :max, 'grey')

Or we can use the nice shorthand syntax to do the same thing:

cats = %{ cats | max: 'grey' }

Note that the shorthand syntax only works when updating an existing value in a map, not to insert a new key / value. To insert a new key / value we still need to use Map.put.