This is by design: https://go.dev/doc/faq#Does_Go_have_a_ternary_form
Ken Thompson added ?: to B / C and then he took it from us in Go due to the wisdom he gathered in between.
Ken Thompson added ?: to B / C and then he took it from us in Go due to the wisdom he gathered in between.
I disagree:
- The variable name is repeated three times, increasing visual clutter and the chance of typos.
- The variable can't declared immutable. In Java/JS/Dart/etc it's nice to know that after "const x = foo ? bar : baz", x won't change.
And you don't even have to add a new operator, Rust and Kotlin get these benefits with an expression form of if/else.
And yet, Go has a switch statement.
var someVar, anotherVar string
// ...
switch {
case someVar == "whatever":
fmt.Println("Tell me how, exactly,")
case anotherVar == "nope":
fmt.Println("this compiles to a jump table?")
default:
fmt.Println("Spoiler: it doesn't.")
}If the switch is over a fixed set of strings, then can't the backend generate a perfect hash function ala gperf and then proceed to use the computed hash value to implement a jump table?
Also, FWIW, the only compiler backends I've ever seen blindly emit a jump table all died in the '80s. Jump tables aren't always the fastest choice: https://www.cipht.net/2017/10/03/are-jump-tables-always-fast...
Note that my example “switches” over two independent variables. Even if the Go compiler did generate a table, for this example it would really be generating two tables: and then we're back to the “how is this better than an `if`?” question.