Re: Replacing the "if" statement with an "if" expression which supersedes it

I have seldomly the need for a true ternary operator, and almost always I can swap "a and b or c" to "not a and c or b". But it does happen that both values can be falsy in which case a true ternary operator would be useful.

I have mixed feelings about the if x then a else[if y then] b end syntax where the last value of blocks a and b are possible return values.

If Lua went down that road I would also want those semantics for the do ... end block as well, but probably not for loops and certainly not for function return values (those should be explicit).

Allthough I could be persuaded that loops are multi return blocks:

local x, y = for i = 1, 2 do
    i * i
end

local t = { for line in io.lines(".bash_history") end }

Okay maybe loops as multi return values wouldn't be that bad but I can't imagine implicit return statements for function blocks would be a good idea:

function export.login(user)
login(user, getsecret(user)) -- might leak critical information
end

~ Sewbacca

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