[erlang-questions] Erlang 3000?

[damien morton]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:48 AM, mats cronqvist <masse@REDACTED> wrote:

> "Robert Virding" <rvirding@REDACTED> writes:
>
> > Why do you want/need an undef or nil object in language where everything
> has a
> > value? And where you have immutable data?
>
>
None, True, False are just atoms in Python - nothing particularly special
about them except the conventions for their use.


> > Many complain about the if *expression* but I don't really understand why
> it
> > warrants so much interest. I personally find that I don't use it much
> anyway,
> > and that because I don't *need* to use it.
>
>   you don't use it because it's cruft, and people complain about it
>  because they dislike cruft.
>

Right, and its cruft because it raises questions about which should be used
in which circumstance. Most people will just ignore the "if" statement and
use a "case" statement instead, but a novice will take a while to settle
into that usage, always wondering if they should use one or the other.

A rough grep through the erlang libraries produces some stats:

38 thousand "case" statements
1800 "if" statements.

So here's a question: Are there any examples of "if" statements that would
be awkward or difficult to express using a "case" statement?
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