From: Peter Hickman <peter@...>
Date: 2008-02-01T00:18:26+09:00
Subject: Re: can ik make this more beautifull?

Jari Williamsson wrote:
> But this elsif solution isn't heading for clarity either, compared to 
> using a case expression:
> x = case temp
>         when 1 then 'cat'
>         when 2 then 'dog'
>         when 3 then 'banana'
>         else nil
>     end
>
> In the elsif example, x appears 4 times instead of 1, temp appears 3 
> times instead of 1. Apart from require an editor that support 
> refactoring and the risk of typos, there will also be a performance 
> hit when temp isn't matched.

Indeed this is a nice solution to the problem of assigning a value. 
However the 'temp == ...' was of my own invention and not part of the 
OP. That simply gave 'condition1', 'condition2' etc so there is a strong 
possibility that what you propose would not work for him as the 
conditions might not be based upon the same variable as in my example, 
if the OP is new to programming you will have led him down the wrong 
path by not pointing out that your solution only works for conditions 
based upon the conditions all being tests of temp.

Also when posting code it helps to run it, no matter how much of a 
genius you are. Your code does not do what mine did. Try this instead:

x = case temp
        when 'cat' then 1
        when 'dog' then 2
        when 'banana' then 3
        else nil
        end

I would worry less about how many keystrokes you have saved and spend a 
little more time getting it right and testing your code. You wrote 3 
lines less than me and got it completely backwards.