In this lesson we will look at the control structures available to us in Elixir.
Chances are you've encountered if/2 before, and if you've used Ruby you're familiar with unless/2. In Elixir they work much the same way but they are defined as macros, not language constructs; You can find their implementation in the Kernel module.
It should be noted that in Elixir, the only falsey values are nil and the boolean false.
iex> if String.valid?("Hello") do
...> "Valid string!"
...> else
...> "Invalid string."
...> end
"Valid string!"
iex> if "a string value" do
...> "Truthy"
...> end
"Truthy"Using unless/2 is like if/2 only it works on the negative:
iex> unless is_integer("hello") do
...> "Not an Int"
...> end
"Not an Int"
If it's necessary to match against multiple patterns we can use case:
iex> case {:ok, "Hello World"} do
...> {:ok, result} -> result
...> {:error} -> "Uh oh!"
...> _ -> "Catch all"
...> end
"Hello World"
The _ variable is an important inclusion in case statements. Without it failure to find a match will raise an error:
iex> case :even do
...> :odd -> "Odd"
...> end
** (CaseClauseError) no case clause matching: :even
iex> case :even do
...> :odd -> "Odd"
...> _ -> "Not Odd"
...> end
"Not Odd"Consider _ as the else that will match "everything else".
Since case relies on pattern matching, all of the same rules and restrictions apply. If you intend to match against existing variables you must use the pin ^ operator:
iex> pie = 3.41
3.41
iex> case "cherry pie" do
...> ^pie -> "Not so tasty"
...> pie -> "I bet #{pie} is tasty"
...> end
"I bet cherry pie is tasty"
Another neat feature of case is its support for guard clauses:
This example comes directly from the official Elixir Getting Started guide.
iex> case {1, 2, 3} do
...> {1, x, 3} when x > 0 ->
...> "Will match"
...> _ ->
...> "Won't match"
...> end
"Will match"
Check the official docs for Expressions allowed in guard clauses.
When we need to match conditions, and not values, we can turn to cond; this is akin to else if or elsif from other languages:
This example comes directly from the official Elixir Getting Started guide.
iex> cond do
...> 2 + 2 == 5 ->
...> "This will not be true"
...> 2 * 2 == 3 ->
...> "Nor this"
...> 1 + 1 == 2 ->
...> "But this will"
...> end
"But this will"
Like case, cond will raise an error if there is no match. To handle this, we can define a condition set to true:
iex> cond do
...> 7 + 1 == 0 -> "Incorrect"
...> true -> "Catch all"
...> end
"Catch all"