Re: Readability question.

Sean:
On Fri, 5 Jun 2026 at 22:11, Sean Conner <[email protected]> wrote:
...
>   I would write this as:
>
>         if a then
>           if b then
>             return combine(a,b) -- a b
>           else
>             return a -- a /b
>           end
>         elseif b then
>           return b -- a /b
>         else
>           return -- /a /b
>         end
>
> I personally don't like comparing directly against nil unless 'false' is a
> valid thing to return (for instance, a = false b = nil).

Yep, I did not clarify it, but when thinking on packing it in a
"guard" func this was specifically the case, as I have lots of tables
where I must distinguish false from absent. Were not this the case I
probably would have gone your way, positive testing first, which I use
normally except when trying to avoid deep nesting, typically in error
cases.
if error_condition_ then

> But that aside,
> this reads better to me as if we have an a and not a b, we return a.  I've
> marked the four cases this covers (where /a means "not a").

For just-falseness, this is just the case. My version, nilness of
falseness versions, can have the if swapped to do it this ways.
The reason I tested for invalid a/ return b  first, unexplained again,
if that for my usual combinator cases I many times start with nil
initial values, so I went for what I thought faster. Anyway, if we
have not a, b I think my version skips first return, returns a in
second. As I tested nils, returns will be equal. And yes, for the full
library version I would go for your solutions or some of the variants,
I think I wrote some too, with double nested if-then-else, as I need 4
returns ( In fact your version, switching conditions to ~= nil ( which
I dislike, for being a negative test and someone changing the default
keyboard handling for ES to ~ being a modifier which leads to
uncountable ≃ being put by me in the source code ( maybe useful for
other language, but in spain we only use it for ñÑ and we have a
dedicated key for it ) ) lends itself well to make use of the implicit
return at function end, which to me is pleasing ( nothing to combine,
do nothing and fall of, but just is weird and personal ).

Francisco Olarte.

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