Hi all,


the proposal is in the title. :-) Do you think we could need something like #identityCaseOf:[otherwise:], analogously to #caseOf:[otherwise:], on Object?


Here is my motivation: I very often use #caseOf:[otherwise:] to eliminate nested if blocks (for one of many examples, take a look at PreferenceBrowserMorph >> #keyPressed:). In one recent situation [1], however, I confused equality and identity (I have to admit that this is a common error of mines) so I had to convert my beautiful #caseOf: statement back to a boring list of if checks. I wonder whether we could - or should - introduce something like #identityCaseOf:otherwise: (names subjected to discussion) for such situations?


Historically, I guess this has not been built because #caseOf: has probably been inspired by the switch/select/case statement of other languages, which usually only accept constant case values. But in Smalltalk, luckily, we do not have this restriction, thus I'm wondering whether there is any reason to have #caseOf: but not #identityCaseOf:. Looking forward to your opinions! :-)


Best,

Christoph

<http://www.hpi.de/>

[1] https://github.com/LinqLover/SimulationStudio/commit/ddf0ef3e21c63a2fd9b08703c8e9ff213b7b6b0b
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20210327/5a57b499/attachment.html>