[ENH] ifEmptyParam-md

Adam Spitz adspitz at yahoo.ca
Fri Jan 30 18:54:13 UTC 2004


marcus at ira.uka.de wrote:

> Now there's a nice way of having ifEmpty: take both a 0-arg block
> (like ifNotNil:) and a 1-arg block (like ifNotNilDo:) by using
> valueWithPossibleArgs: to double-dispatch on the number of
> arguments in the block. 

I've been playing with a more general version of this. I added a couple
of methods to Object:

if: condition then: trueClause else: falseClause
	^ (condition valueWithPossibleArgs: {self})
		ifTrue: [trueClause valueWithPossibleArgs: {self}]
		ifFalse: [falseClause valueWithPossibleArgs: {self}]

if: condition then: result
	^ self if: condition then: result else: [self]

I also added a #valueWithPossibleArgs: method to Symbol, so I can do
things like:

name := (FillInTheBlank request: 'What is your name?')
                if: #isEmptyOrNil then: [^ self].

For the really common tests like #isNil and #notNil, I like having
shortcut methods like #ifNil: and #ifNotNilDo:, just because it saves a few keystrokes.
And maybe #isEmpty is common enough to warrant a shortcut method, too,
but personally, I'd probably just go for the general one.

I also like it that if we had Self's implicit-self syntax, this method
would also serve as a plain ordinary vanilla if-then-else statement.


Adam



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