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Comment by LinaLauneBaer | Hacker News Reader

often times you want to do more stuff in either case so ? does not always work. The if-else approach is more general.

You could also do this:

    let x: Something = {
      if condition {
        someSideEffect()
        return foo()
      } else {
        anotherSideEffect()
        return bar()
      }
    }()

But it's kind of ugly.

Sad that Swift doesn't use an expressive if, then you could just write:

    let x: Something = if condition {
        // do stuff
        foo()
    } else {
        // do other stuff
        bar()
    }

That's something I really miss in other languages—the ternary operator is just not good enough for when you have a condition like this. In lisp it's 3 lines which is just the right amount when in other languages you have 6 lines (and until now unnecessary mutability) or only one.

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