Hi,

I’m new to functional programming in general and to Elixir in particular. One thing I have some difficulties with is having no early return. I found This article, which works on some cases but not in one like this:

Let’s say I have 3 functions that can return either a value or nil:

get_text(:first)
get_text(:second)
get_text(:third)

I want to stop and get the result from the first function that returns a value (not nil) or nil if all fails.

Something like this works:

  def test_cases() do
    case get_text(:first) do
      value when value != nil ->
        value

      nil ->
        case get_text(:second) do
          value when value != nil ->
            value

          nil ->
            case get_text(:third) do
              value when value != nil ->
                value

              nil ->
                nil
            end
        end
    end
  end

but this looks really bad.

Using cond do works too and looks nicer but require calling each function twice:

  def text_cond() do
    cond do
      get_text(:first) != nil -> get_text(:first)
      get_text(:second) != nil -> get_text(:second)
      get_text(:third) != nil -> get_text(:third)
      true -> nil
    end
  end

I’m sure I’m missing something. Any help with this?