ifn't

JPDev@programming.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 751 points –
123

I propose a new, more threatening kind of control flow.

do {
  /* something */
} or else {
  /* you don't want to find out */
}

Some C++ style guides suggest the following naming convention for functions that crash on any error

OpenFileOrDie()

PHP has the always wonderful (and perfectly functional) syntax of

logUserIn() or die();

Or Perl

Perl also has unless() for the very purpose in OP, which is a more sensible choice.

Oh, and if you need to reinforce your belief that Perl is a mess, the single-quote character can be used as a package separator instead of "::". This was set in the 90s when nobody was quite sure of the right syntax for package separators, so it borrowed "::" from C++ and the single quote from Ada (I think).

That means the ifn't() in OP can be interpreted as calling the t() function on the ifn package.

The "::" separator is vastly preferred, though. Single quotes run havoc on syntax highlighting text editors (since they can also be used for strings). About the only time I've seen it used is a joke module, Acme::don't.

Personally, I like to call catched exception variables up, so for a rethrow I can throw up;.

Except rethrowing an exception in C# is just throw;, anything else is a crime against the person who reads your stacktraces.

I mean, it makes sense to call ComplainToErrorAndExit just 'die', no?

One of the modules in a project I'm working on is called VulkanOrDie which always makes me crack up when I see it in the compilation messages.

It's funnier when you try to SysCallAndDie() :-P

(that's a real thing in perl btw - I guess that function didn't get the memo)

Now what about GZDoom's GoAwayAndDie();?

The better try-catch. More intuitive if you ask me.

It exists, kind of. Python has this construct

for item in iterable:
    ...
else:
     ...

which always puzzles me, since it depends on a break statement execution. I always have to look it up when the else block is executed.

You just made me a offer I can't refuse. I go now to sleep with the fishes...

Reduce exclamation marks!? Great Scott!!!!! Is there a shortage of punctuation in the future!?

You could have saved two, all you had to do was use the interrobang. Youโ€™re a monster.

Kernighan, what was I thinking?

Why not just ifnot? Same count of characters but an o instead of a possibly problematic single quote.

I think it's just capitalizing on a trend to add n't to otherwise noy contractions, to make them into contractions. Contractionn'ts, if you will

Yes... how is "reducing exclamation marks" a good thing when you do it by adding a ' (not to be confused with , ยด,โ€˜orโ€™` ..which are all different characters).

Does this rely on the assumption that everyone uses a US QWERTY keyboard where ! happens to be slightly more inconvenient than typing '?

If someone really wanted to add it, probably the best would be to use unless

I really liked having unless in Ruby; a ! can be easy to miss, while unless made it clear without needing to write out != true.

It's also cool when you do unless(!condition). I particularly like this.

Still not as good as whence

Is this a reference to something because Iโ€™d love to read it if you have a time to share.

Woah. I did a quick google and it's not just a meme, but actually used in some major lang's libraries.

This is one of those "modern Google/search sucks" moments because I couldn't immediately find examples of it in a programming language.

I actually used DDG and most I've seen, they're just used as arguments for functions notably in C and Python

Legislation (which feels similar to programming languages sometimes) seems to have some keywords of its own. I remember seeing a lot of Whereas ... and Having regard to ....

"Help's with readability"? You know what else helps? Not using contractions and introducing an unbalanced single quote.

Runs havoc on parsing, too. It's bad for both humans and robots. I say we ship it.

This feels racist against Appalachia. We naturally speak with contractions and are commonly referred to as "unbalanced".

I'm struggling to understand if this is true or ifn't true

Imagine the regex needed to highlight code with that extra single quote.

I'm just hoping this paves the way to code with Southern dialect

iffun is == true
iffun ain't == false

May I introduce you to the joys of #define and creating your own horrible sub language

That reminds me of an old paper about how to create a compilable C program out of old game ROMs. Decompile to assembly. Implement a bunch of #define statements that implement all the ASM statements. Now compile it to a native binary on whatever platform.

Won't likely be faster or more accurate than regular emulation methods, but it's a neat idea considering that the source code on all this stuff was lost a long time ago.

I'd take a not or "if not" operator tbh.

It has a not keyword it's used for pattern matching.

if (x is not null)

It also has a !=.

Pattern matching is different.

Yeah, I just said it since you used it with null. I used it a lot for enums

The type matching is the most common thing I use it with. Combined with inline variables.

if (x is string { Length: 5} s)
{
    // do stuff with s
}

And switch expressions.

As a side note inline variables are amazing haha

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This has to be illegal. I mean, it's basically suicide incitement (or whatever is the phrase for it)

What's wrong with "else"

if(condition) {#block never used} else {#actually do a thing}

Vs

ifn't(condition) {#actually do a thing}

Vs

if!(condition) {#actually do a thing}

Cannot start a statement with else. One can with ifn't. There is a new thing where we don't branch (which is a separate discussion).

Or am I missing the joke...

i assume "ifnot" wasn't edgy enough and makes inferior noises on custom mechanical keyboards? /s

I can actually define this in TCL:

% proc ifn't {cond cmds} {if {!$cond} {uplevel $cmds}}
% ifn't false {puts 12}
12
% ifn't true {puts 12}
%