I would also try to move the code to Enum.find, or Enum.find_value, but the condition is more complex, and not really a truthy kind of condition.

It’s hard to capture the with, with Enum.find

I’ve written code similar to this, so yeah, I think that’s a perfectly reasonable usage of Enum.reduce_while.

Your code looks good except one point. Calling Enum.reduce* functions does not makes sense if you do not need an accumulator. I would rather write something like:

func = fn
  # return error if needed - equivalent of: {:halt, {:error, error}}
  x when rem(x, 2) != 0 -> {:error, 2}
  # skip item if needed - equivalent of: {:cont, acc}
  x when rem(x, 3) != 0 -> nil
  # return ok tuple for desired item - equivalent of: {:halt, {:ok, item}}
  x -> {:ok, x}
end

iex> Enum.find_value(1..3, func)
{:error, 2} # error returned
iex> Enum.find_value([2, 4], func)
nil # all skipped
iex> Enum.find_value([2, 4, 6], func)
{:ok, 6} # ok returned

For more information please take a look at Enum.find_value/2 documentation.

I know recursion could solve this problem quite elegantly.

What I meant is Enum.find_value is not working well in that case.

Because the condition should exit only if ok, or unexpected error… and continue if the error is known. But You need to return nil/or false instead, to continue iteration