Feature #21515: Add `&return` as sugar for `x=my_calculation; return x if x`

• Status: Open
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -

[nhorton (Noah Horton)]

Let me preface this by saying I have no marriage to the exact keyword name of &return.

Problem

It is very common to have an early return in code where you get some initial value and return it if it is non-null. i.e.

return my_calculation(input_a, input_b) if my_calculation(input_a, input_b)

That form on its own is verbose and one where you need to look at it for a moment to confirm it is the same code on either side of the if.

If my_calculation is non-trivial at all, it normally gets turned into something with a variable:

my_calc = my_calculation(input_a, input_b)
return my_calc if my_calc

That is now two lines. The worse scenario, however, is if the user did not bother doing that and my_calculation turned out to be expensive (and they did not know it).

Proposal

I propose a syntax of &return my_calculation(input_a, input_b) where it will evaluate the argument and return it as the result of the method if it is non-nil, otherwise it will continue on.

Alternatives

Do Nothing

There is no way to work around this with rolling your own methods. You can't make a returnif method or something yourself since you can't do a return in the caller's scope.

Different Name

The best other name I saw were permutations of returnif. The biggest issue I see is the similarity of the following two statements:

return if foo
returnif foo

Those are obviously very, very different statements, but are somewhat similar. However, things like this are common, and the code is still quite distinct on those, so I think it is acceptable.

Ultimately, this feels so similar to the safe navigator that using & in this context feels appropriate.

Thank you all for your consideration.

[vo.x (Vit Ondruch)]

Proposal like this always reminds me:

https://poignant.guide/book/chapter-3.html

How am I supposed to read the &return my_calculation(input_a, input_b). Reading it "and return my calculations from input_a and input_b" does not make sense to me.

[Earlopain (Earlopain _)]

I would prefer it like this:

return result if result = my_calculation(input_a, input_b)

It doesn't need new syntax and to me at least it is rather intuitive. Unfortunatly this doesn't work today because the return code doesn't see the local that was declared in the if condition. You would have to write it as a multiline if or do result = nil above it which kinda defeats the point.

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

Why not:

x = my_calculation(input_a, input_b) and return x

[masterleep2 (Bill Lipa)]

Also:

my_calculation(input_a, input_b)&.then{return it}