wonder what people think about this - sometimes i ...

# codereview

[gjesse]

wonder what people think about this - sometimes i think the elvis operator can be a little confusing, especially in combination with other operators - using an orElse function to specify a default

fun <T> T?.orElse(default: T) = this ?: default

for example i have a when statement like this

return when {
           foo.blah?.someNullableFlag ?: false -> true
}

vs

return when {
           foo.blah?.someNullableFlag.orElse(false) -> true
}

[gjesse]

seems a little more readable to me

[Shawn]

from a strictly language-based point of view, I don’t think the elvis operator is hard to grok after being told what it does

[Shawn]

anyone learning Kotlin should definitely go over the null-handling operators like ?: and ?.

[Shawn]

as far as your particular when goes, I’ve usually been told when dealing with Boolean? to do equality checks even if it looks a little silly

[Shawn]

if (maybeBoolean == true), for example

[gjesse]

i don’t think it’s hard to grok on a single statement level, but it can get a little hairy when doing multiple things on a line, and in my particular case assigning the false ‘default’ to the expression side as opposed to the outcome side can cause confusion. really like the == true trick, i think i’ll go with that

[elect]

I'd also do an equality check

return when {
          foo.blah?.someNullableFlag == true -> true

}

[gjesse]

yes, that’s basically what i did

[Joris PZ]

I like this little helper function! Is there a good reason you didn't inline it? Because it seems a perfect candidate for it to me.

[gjesse]

no reason, i was just playing around with the readability of it