Oh god yea, replicating switch functionality with a huge column of elifs is so gross.

The issue with Lua's and/or in this context is that they don't work if false or nil are valid values. In a and b or c, if b = false, the result is always c.

I also love null-related operators like ?? and ?. for this, since they explicitly check for null, letting you handle any non-null values for optional/default values. The syntax can get a bit cursed, like maybeNull?.maybeMethod?.(args) in JS, but I still prefer that to writing out multiple field accesses in an if condition... And arguably the code is only less readable if you aren't acclimated to it.

All that said I do really appreciate Lua's simplicity, as a language that provides tooling to create the features you want instead of building them into the language, though I wish it had some conventional regex instead of its own patterns.

OK true, technically speaking it is indeed more readable, I guess I really meant that it takes far longer to read. I do admire Lua's barebones simplicity. Thank you for the "or" tip, I've used it a few times before but I often forget about it.

Good point, I have only seen 2. nested ternary operators in the wild, and I am pretty sure the second level was added as a bugfix.

Hey, when you gotta pick a value from a bunch of options, it's either if/elseif/else, ternary, switch/case, or a map/dict.

Ternary generally has the easiest to read format of the options, unless you put it all on one line like a crazy person.

For all its faults, I think what makes C beautiful is that it gives you complete freedom do be an absolute idiot.

Whenever I decide to hack something together with an arcane macro, I feel like an animal being released back into the wild, with the (pre-)compiler yelling "Be free! Explore the mysteries of our incomprehensible world!"

I have bad news for you

Because it can be done for multiple lines too. And you can do else-if too. Also, "if" and "else" is more recognizable than "?" and ":"

x = if y > 5 {
    println!("Y was over 5");
    z + 5
} else if y < 0 {
    handle_negative_y(y);
    z - y
} else {
    println!("<WARN> unexpected value for y"}
    0
}

What I like about using if and else for that is that you're already using those keywords for branching in other parts of the code.

Though my least favorite is probably Python's:

x = "foo" if y > 5 else "bar"

It just seems backwards to me

This is valid rust. I don't know if there are more languages with this feature

This is Rust syntax, but there's similar syntax in Haskell