[runevault]

A simple example for anyone who might not appreciate why this can be so nice.

In languages where if is a statement (aka returns no value), you'd write code like

int value;

if(condition) { value = 5; } else { value = 10; }

Instead of just int value = if(condition) {5} else {10}

Some languages leave ifs as statements but add trinary as a way to get the same effect which is an acceptable workaround, but at least for me there are times I appreciate an if statement because it stands out more making it obvious what I'm doing.

[tomtheelder]

It’s only an acceptable workaround in the case of two conditions, but you’re still out of luck if you have >2 branches and no match expression.

[runevault]

You can technically do some craziness with nested ternary operators but they look awful and if you write them you will regret it later.

[tomtheelder]

True, but I would have to categorize that as an unacceptable workaround haha

[ahci8e]

How would this work if I need to update multiple variables?

  int value1 = 0;
  int value2 = 0;
  if (condition) {
    value1 = 8;
    value2 = 16;
  } else {
    value1 = 128;
    value2 = 256;
  }

Would I have to repeat the if expression twice?

  int value1 = if (condition) { 8 } else { 128 };
  int value2 = if (condition) { 16 } else { 256 };

[tomtheelder]

Depends on the language a bit, but a common feature in these languages is the tuple. Using a tuple you would end up with something like:

let (value1, value2) = if (condition) { (8, 16) } else { (16, 256) }

Or else you’d just use some other sort of compound value like a struct or something. Tuple is just convenient for doing it on the fly.

[runevault]

hah we gave basically the same example on the same minute.

I love destructuring so much, I don't know if I'd want to use a language without it anymore.

[tomtheelder]

It’s actually so painful to go back to languages without destructuring and pattern matching.

[runevault]

As someone who writes a fair bit of c# making switch and if's into expressions and adding Discriminated Unions (which they are actually working on) are my biggest "please give me this."

Plus side I dabble in f# which is so much more expressive.

[lyu07282]

Same for me in the Scala vs. Java world, it's hard once you get used to how awesome expressions over statements and algebraic data types/case enums/"discriminated unions" are. But I haven't done much C# (yet) myself, could you clarify for me: does C# have discriminated unions? I didn't think the language supported that (only F# has them)?

[runevault]

Depends on the language. if you have destructuring you can do it all at once.

So like I believe you can do this in Rust (haven't written it in a while, I know it has destructuring of tuples)

let (a, b) = if (condition) { (1, "hello") } else { (3,"goodbye") }

[another2another]

.. save yourself an else :

int value1 = 128;

int value2 = 256;

if (condition) {

    value1 = 8;

    value2 = 16;

  }