How to do one-liner if else statement? [duplicate]

Question

Please see https://golangdocs.com/ternary-operator-in-golang as pointed by @accdias (see comments)

Can I write a simple if-else statement with variable assignment in go (golang) as I would do in php? For example:

$var = ( $a > $b )? $a: $b;

Currently I have to use the following:

var c int
if a > b {
    c = a
} else {
    c = b
}

Sorry I cannot remember the name if this control statement and I couldn't find the info in-site or through google search. :/

Answer 1

As the comments mentioned, Go doesn't support ternary one liners. The shortest form I can think of is this:

var c int
if c = b; a > b {
    c = a
}

But please don't do that, it's not worth it and will only confuse people who read your code.

Answer 2

As the others mentioned, Go does not support ternary one-liners. However, I wrote a utility function that could help you achieve what you want.

// IfThenElse evaluates a condition, if true returns the first parameter otherwise the second
func IfThenElse(condition bool, a interface{}, b interface{}) interface{} {
    if condition {
        return a
    }
    return b
}

Here are some test cases to show how you can use it

func TestIfThenElse(t *testing.T) {
    assert.Equal(t, IfThenElse(1 == 1, "Yes", false), "Yes")
    assert.Equal(t, IfThenElse(1 != 1, nil, 1), 1)
    assert.Equal(t, IfThenElse(1 < 2, nil, "No"), nil)
}

For fun, I wrote more useful utility functions such as:

IfThen(1 == 1, "Yes") // "Yes"
IfThen(1 != 1, "Woo") // nil
IfThen(1 < 2, "Less") // "Less"

IfThenElse(1 == 1, "Yes", false) // "Yes"
IfThenElse(1 != 1, nil, 1)       // 1
IfThenElse(1 < 2, nil, "No")     // nil

DefaultIfNil(nil, nil)  // nil
DefaultIfNil(nil, "")   // ""
DefaultIfNil("A", "B")  // "A"
DefaultIfNil(true, "B") // true
DefaultIfNil(1, false)  // 1

FirstNonNil(nil, nil)                // nil
FirstNonNil(nil, "")                 // ""
FirstNonNil("A", "B")                // "A"
FirstNonNil(true, "B")               // true
FirstNonNil(1, false)                // 1
FirstNonNil(nil, nil, nil, 10)       // 10
FirstNonNil(nil, nil, nil, nil, nil) // nil
FirstNonNil()                        // nil

If you would like to use any of these, you can find them here https://github.com/shomali11/util