How to exit an if clause
- by Roman Stolper
What sorts of methods exist for prematurely exiting an if clause?
There are times when I'm writing code and want to put a break statement inside of an if clause, only to remember that those can only be used for loops.
Lets take the following code as an example:
if some_condition:
...
if condition_a:
# do something
# and then exit the outer if block
...
if condition_b:
# do something
# and then exit the outer if block
# more code here
I can think of one way to do this: assuming the exit cases happen within nested if statements, wrap the remaining code in a big else block. Example:
if some_condition:
...
if condition_a:
# do something
# and then exit the outer if block
else:
...
if condition_b:
# do something
# and then exit the outer if block
else:
# more code here
The problem with this is that more exit locations mean more nesting/indented code.
Alternatively, I could write my code to have the if clauses be as small as possible and not require any exits.
Does anyone know of a good/better way to exit an if clause?
If there are any associated else-if and else clauses, I figure that exiting would skip over them.
