operatorsocamldefault-valuesyntactic-sugarelvis-operator

Are there any default value tricks / Elvis Operator in Ocaml?

Are there any elvis like operator in Ocaml ? Any sort of optional chaining that return the right value when the left one is empty, a default value operator, like the |> operator with opposite effect.

If not what are the good practices ?

As an example of a use case :

let get_val val_1 val_2 = 
  if (val_1) then (val_1) else (val_2);;

Are there any syntactic sugar ?

Solution

  • First, in OCaml if ... then ... else ... is an expression and thus there is no needs to have a distinct ternary operator.

    Second, OCaml has optional arguments. If I guess correctly the supposed semantics of your get_val function, it can be written:

    let default = []
let get_val ?(val_1=default) () = val_1

    which gives you [] as the default value when the named argument val_1 is absent

    let () =
  assert ([] = get_val ())

    or the val_1 argument otherwise:

    let () = 
  assert ([2;3;4] = get_val ~val_1:[2;3;4] ())