Is there a nicer way to write this:

val resultOrNull = firstAttemptOrNull() ?: run {
    if (someConditionMet()) {
        secondAttemptOrNull()
    } else {
        null
    }
}

you could remove the

run

block (and consider a

when

block instead of

if

):

val resultOrNull = firstAttemptOrNull() ?: when {
    someConditionMet() -> secondAttemptOrNull()
    else -> null
}

firstAttemptOrNull() ?: secondAttemptOrNull()?.takeIf { someConditionMet() }

downside is that it will run

secondAttemptOrNull

even if

someConditionMet

is false and then drop result on the floor. Unsure if there's a helper that runs the conditional first, like an

if

statement that runs a lambda.

How about declaring a simple top-level fun:

inline fun <R> otherwiseIf(condition: Boolean, block: () -> R): R? = if (condition) {
    block()
} else {
    null
}

And then we can do:

val resultOrNull = firstAttemptOrNull()
    ?: otherwiseIf(someConditionMet) {
        secondAttemptOrNull()
    }

You could, but it looks so much like a normal

if

I'd have to question if we're only doing it because we can 🙂

Yeah I agree. The big drawback is it opens the question “how does otherwiseIf()/ifTrue() actually work” so make the code more difficult to read in some sense.

I have

orElse

in my codebase because it reads nicely, but I can't think of good syntax for the inverse that is meaningfully different from

if

. i.e.

thisThingIsValid.orElse { doSomething() }

ifTrue

would be a much better name for my

otherwiseIf

function of course!