Isn't there a nicer way to combine multiple `Union{T, Nothing}`

Question

I'm very new to Julia but I've got a some background in Scheme/Rust/F#.

Today I wanted to make yesterday's AoC nicer without an explicit number of nested loops.

I arrived at this working solution, but I don't like the last if. In the languages mentioned above I would call a function (or use a computation expression) that gives me the first result that is not None. For Julia, I expected something to do that. It does, but unexpectedly in an eager fashion.

So When I tried return something(find(r, n, start + 1, which), find(r, n - 1, start + 1, extended)), that also evaluated the second argument when the first already had a result—and thus crashed.

Is there a macro/lazy version or something that I didn't find? How are you supposed to handle a case like that?

I also thought about (short-circuited) or'ing them together, but I guess Julia's strictness in that matter spoils that.

using DataStructures

function find(r::Array{Int}, n, start = 1, which = nil())::Union{Int,Nothing}
    if start <= length(r)
        extended = cons(start, which)
        with_current = sum(i -> r[i], extended)
        if with_current == 2020 && n == 1
            return prod(i -> r[i], extended)
        else
            # Unfortunately no :(
            #return something(find(r, n, start + 1, which), find(r, n - 1, start + 1, extended))
            re = find(r, n, start + 1, which)
            if isnothing(re)
                return find(r, n - 1, start + 1, extended)
            else
                re
            end
        end
    end
end

Answer 1

Let me comment more on it why it is not possible given the discussion in the comments.

In Julia function arguments are evaluated eagerly, so Julia evaluates both find(r, n, start + 1, which) and find(r, n - 1, start + 1, extended) before passing them to something function.

Now, with macros you have (I am not writing in a fully general case for simplicity and I hope I got the hygiene right :)):

julia> macro something(x, y)
           quote
               local vx = $(esc(x))
               isnothing(vx) ? $(esc(y)) : vx
           end
       end
@something (macro with 1 method)

julia> @something 1 2
1

julia> @something nothing 2
2

julia> @something 1 sqrt(-1)
1

julia> @something nothing sqrt(-1)
ERROR: DomainError with -1.0:
sqrt will only return a complex result if called with a complex argument. Try sqrt(Complex(x)).

(in a full-blown version of the macro varargs and Some should be handled to replicate something exactly)