August 24, 2017

If else switch

Here is a neat little trick that I picked up in a StackOverflow answer a while back (will link if I find it again). It may be obvious to some, but I thought I’d share it anyway. It might not be that often that you can utilize it, but it offers a chance to write some cleaner code those few times.

If you have an if else statement, where the else is containing another block statement, you can simplify it, saving indentations and curly brackets. Compare:

if (someStuff) {
  console.log(someStuff)
} else {
  switch (someOtherStuff) {
    // do some other stuff
  }
}

and…

if (someStuff) {
  console.log(someStuff)
} else switch (someOtherStuff) {
  // do some other stuff
}

You can replace else if with another block statement instead of if, like else for, else while, else switch or else do...while. This works at least in Javascript and Java.