•Re: improve ugly flow control

[merlyn]

Just a different try on this:

use List::Util qw(first);
if (defined(my $try = first { $hash{$_} } @options)) {
  do_something($try);
} else {
  log_failure();
}

[perrin]

That's a neat idea. Unfortunately, in my real code, the $hash{$_} test is actually something expensive, so I need to stop as soon as one of the options works. I should have made a better example.

[merlyn]

Uh, first actually bails on that. Try it!

[Aristotle]

I liked that quite a bit, but the structure has been bothering me, like with most other solutions: it feels to me like the failure case gets too much emphasis. I didn't know how to do any better when I first saw the post, though. But now I think I do:

{
    my $try = first { $hash{ $_ } } @options;
    defined $try or ( log_failure(), last );
    do_something( $try );
}