Are there a recommended practice about when to use an if and when to use a when expression?

# announcements

[Paul Woitaschek]

Are there a recommended practice about when to use an if and when to use a when expression?

[eekboom]

Not specifically, as far as I know. Use common sense and good judgement.

Personally, I’d say, strongly prefer when if one of these is true:

• it is similar to a “classic switch”, i.e. the decision logic depends on the value of a single expression
• the construct is used to set a variable/return value, so that you can use the when as an expression where every branch returns something
• you have more than two branches and each branch does something conceptually similar. That avoids long if-elseif-elseif-else constructs.

[sindrenm]

Agree with the above. However, it can also be perfectly readable/understandable to use `if`/`else` as expressions as well (point 2), that's not reserved for when expressions.

[karelpeeters]

Once I have an if .. else if .. else I usually just switch it to a when, I think it's more readable to have all conditions right above each other on the same indent.

[Mike]

And IntelliJ makes it very easy to switch back and forth if you're unsure about which you like better.

[Paul Woitaschek]

I have a co-worker who never uses if but always when. It would be great to have an official reference on this because I don't have any arguments besides my personal taste ;-)

[sindrenm]

In this case, I feel like it makes sense for each team to set themselves some guidelines/“rules”.