OR construction in erlang ?

Mark Scandariato mscandar@REDACTED
Tue Apr 12 21:19:35 CEST 2005


Olivier wrote:
> Hi everyone
> 
> Is there an equivalent to the PHP "or" construction ? I'd like to be 
> able to throw errors when a match fails, i.e. :
> 
> ok = test_function(Args) or throw(error_in_test_function).
> 
> I know I can achieve the same with a catch and case syntax but nesting 
> several tests gets ugly (or increases the number of functions in a module).
> 
> Thanks :)
> 
> -- 
> Olivier
> 
I often use something like:

some_function(Arg) ->
    check(Arg),
    make_use_of(Arg).

check(foo) -> ok;
check(bar) -> ok;
check(E)   -> throw({double_plus_ungood, E}).

You can even leave off the last clause, if you're happy with a function_clause error. (In 
which case, it would be nice to use a name like "good_arg" instead of "check").

Mark.



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