do this without using an "if" | if(s == "value1"){...} else if(s == "value2") { ...}

Question

According to anti-if campaign it is a best practice not to use ifs in our code. Can anyone tell me if it possible to get rid of the if in this piece of code ? (switch is also not an option, The point is to remove the conditional logic, not replace ifs with similar language constructs)

if(s == "foo")
{
    Writeln("some logic here");
}
else if(s == "bar")
{
    Writeln("something else here");
}
else if(s == "raboof")
{
    Writeln("of course I need more than just Writeln");
}

(language: Java or C#)

Answer 1

Here's one way... :)

delegate void DoStuff();

...

IDictionary<string, DoStuff> dict = new Dictionary<string, DoStuff>();
dict["foo"] = delegate { Console.WriteLine("some logic here"); };
dict["bar"] = delegate { Console.WriteLine("something else here"); };
dict["raboof"] = delegate { Console.WriteLine("of course I need more than just Writeln"); };
dict["foo"]();

Answer 2

Make use of the strategy pattern.

In Java terms:

public interface Strategy {
    void execute();
}

public class SomeStrategy implements Strategy {
    public void execute() {
        System.out.println("Some logic.");
    }
}

which you use as follows:

Map<String, Strategy> strategies = new HashMap<String, Strategy>();
strategies.put("strategyName1", new SomeStrategy1());
strategies.put("strategyName2", new SomeStrategy2());
strategies.put("strategyName3", new SomeStrategy3());

// ...

strategies.get(s).execute();

Answer 3

Make an associative data structure. Map<String, String> in Java, IDictionary<string, string> in C#. Initialize it at the beginning of time, and then ...

Answer 4

write classes with virtual methods which is derived from your abstract base class SomeThingWriter.

then every class which are derived from base class should implement a function like writeSomething or whatever you want.

abstract class MyBaseClass
{
     public abstract void writeSomething();
}

class DerivedClass1 : MyBaseClass
{
    public override void writeSomething()
    {
        Writeln("something else here  1");
    }
}

class DerivedClass2 : MyBaseClass
{
    public override void writeSomething()
    {
        Writeln("something else here  2");
    }
}

than just call like

MyBaseClass c = new DeriveClass1();
c.writeSomething();
c = new DerivedClass2();
c.writeSomething();

Answer 5

Looking at the campaign, it's very poorly explained. There's nothing wrong with ifs, but in certain cases they can indicate that you're not using OOP to its full potential.

What the campaign is trying to promote is increased use of polymorphism in order to decouple calling code from the type of object it is looking at.

You would use some smarter object instead of s being a string:

interface I {
  public String getName();
  public void doSomething();
}

class A implements I {
  public String getName() { return "one"; }
  public void doSomething() { ...; }
}

class B implements I {
  public String getName() { return "two"; }
  public void doSomething() { ...; }
}

Then you can replace the ifs with:

I obj = ...get an A or B from somewhere...;
obj.doSomething();

Answer 6

In some cases it might be legit to avoid the if structure

in others its just plain idiocy to try to avoid if.

While the examples provided to avoid the if structure are valid alternatives you should ask yourself this:

Why am i making my code unnecessarly complicated to avoid a simple if structure ? If the only reason is that you have to because of the anti-if campaign then its bad reason

Answer 7

Java

Use an enum which implements a certain method.

enum MyEnum{

    foo{
        public void mymethod(String param1, String param2){
            //dostuff...
        }
    },

    bar{
        public void mymethod(String param1, String param2){
            //dostuff...
        }
    };

    public abstract void mymethod(String param1, String param2);
}

Then in your class :

MyEnum.valueOf(mystring).mymethod(param1, param2);

Answer 8

First of all, be very attentive when reading such "anti" campaigns.

• Ask yourself if Anti IF campaign would like eliminate the logic in the applications?!
• The ideas could have a good application in one situation and a stupid in another one. Be reasonable.
• It may be possible that multiple usage of IF may encumber the reader of the code. but this is any reason to eliminate the if from your code, more that than, this is almost impossible.
• By the way anywhere in the MS design guidelines is indicated do not use if (like is done, by e.g. for the goto statement usage of which is not recommended)...

C#

    switch (myStringVar)
    {
        case "one": doSomething();  break;
        case "two": doSomething(); break;
        case "three": doSomething(); break;
        default: doSomething(); break;
    }

Finally, it reduces this code to the if s... so, only for readability is better, not for performance.

Actually, if Microsoft believes that switch (in c#) is better to replace with if's - OK, I will use (in the concrete situation that you described) the switch.

By the way, it seems that the campaign responds to your question very clear in this example

Answer 9

i'd like to point out that so far, every answer to this question with a code example has a solution that is far more complicated than the original code, and likely much slower.

this is a classic case of an optimization being performed in entirely the wrong context. in some cases, code will become clearer through using OO properly, such as eliminating long chains of type checks. however, simply removing all if statements for the sake of removing them only serves to obfuscate your code.

the if statements (conditional jumps) are still going to happen, be it in your code or the interpreter. keeping them lexically close has many readability and maintenance advantages that are lost through excessive OO use. there is a balance that must be struck between local vs distant logic, but it should never spill over into obfuscation.

for the question at hand, the clearest construct that will avoid the if is probably a hash table / associative array containing anonymous functions, which, for a small number of keys, is effectively just a slow switch statement.

Answer 10

The example you have given I would not change (though I guess you realise it wouldn't need changing)- I'm guessing you are using it as a representational example.

In Fowler's Refactoring book, he discusses the Replace Conditional with Polymorphism. That's what I see as a good use to replace if/switch statements (where appropriate).

Answer 11

I don't think you are making a fair comparison here.

From the look of it the Anti-if campaign is just about practicing a better design approach.

However in your case you can see from all the above examples that if can not be removed from the surface and will always exist somewhere down in the center.

And why exactly is that?

Well If is a general purpose of life. I don't mean to say start coding if every where but in general without if there is no differentiation, if brings decisions and purpose, if that wasn't there then every object in the world would just execute as its suppose to without even knowing anything other then it self. And very simple you wouldn't have asked this question. :)

Answer 12

I think you are looking for Factory Patterns.

Answer 13

You can conceivably do something similar to the "strategy" pattern above using a map of Method calls instead:

public class FooOrBar {
private Map<String, Method> methodMap = new HashMap<String, Method>();

public FooOrBar() {
    try {
        methodMap.put("foo", this.getClass().getMethod("doFoo", new Class[0]));
        methodMap.put("bar", this.getClass().getMethod("doBar", new Class[0]));
    } catch (NoSuchMethodException n) {
        throw new RuntimeException(n);
    }
}

public void doSomething(String str) {
    Method m = methodMap.get(str);
    try {
        m.invoke(this, null);
    } catch (Exception n) {
        throw new RuntimeException(n);
    }

}

public void doFoo() {
    System.out.println("foo");
}

public void doBar() {
    System.out.println("bar");
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    FooOrBar fb = new FooOrBar();
    fb.doSomething("foo");

}

}

Answer 14

Abuse the ternary operator, at least in C#:

Action result = 
            s == "bar" ? (Action)(() => { Console.WriteLine("bar"); }): 
            s == "foo" ? (Action)(() => { Console.WriteLine("foo"); }) :
                         (Action)(() => { Console.WriteLine(); });

Actually, I take that back... never EVER do this. Use a switch.

Answer 15

I read http://www.antiifcampaign.com/articles/the-simplest-anti-if-code.html and I think that the medicine is worse than the disease. Much, much worse. You required to invest up front in some heavy OO machinery to solve a possible (improbable?) future problem.

Answer 16

A little late to the party, but combining the C# dictionary answers from MRFerocius and cletus gives the following implementation of bmargulies's answer:

private Dictionary<string,Action> data = new Dictionary<string, Action> {
    {"foo", () => Console.WriteLine("Some logic here")},
    {"bar", () => Console.WriteLine("something else here")},
    {"raboof", () => Console.WriteLine("of course I need more than just WriteLine")},
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    data["foo"]();
}

• If the key doesn't exist in the dictionary, using it in the indexer will throw an exception.

• Multiple actions can be composed:

  • There can be multiple calls to different methods, using multiline lambda syntax:

    {"foobar", () => { data["foo"](); data["bar"](); }

  • As Action is a delegate type, multiple methods can be attached to a single delegate instance and that delegate instance set as the value; they will be called sequentially when the delegate is invoked:

    public static void main(String[] args) { data["foobar"] = data["foo"] + data["bar"]; //This will invoke first data["foo"] then data["bar"] data["foobar"](); }

    For methods not referenced via the dictionary, this can also be done in the collection initializer:

    {"foobar", (Action)method1 + method2}

Answer 17

Here goes mine. Using LINQ and Factory Pattern :D

class FactoryString
    {
    static FactoryString()
    {
    private static Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string> 
    { 
        {"foo", "some logic here"},
        {"bar", "something else here"},
        {"raboof", "of course I need more than just Writeln"},
    };
}

public static string getString(string s)
{
    return dictionary.Single(x => x.Key.Equals(s)).Value;
}

}

static void main()
{
  Console.WriteLine(FactoryString.getString("foo"));
}

Answer 18

My general perspective on this kind of problem is not that if statements are bad, it's that it's easier to debug data than it is to debug code.

Here's a non-trivial example from production code. This may look a little complicated at first blush, but at its core it's really simple: depending on the disposition code on a charge row, we need to perform an update to some of its related sentence rows. But we pick different sentence rows, and perform different kinds of updates on them, for different disposition codes.

This is a relatively simple example - there are only five disposition codes, two tests, and two types of updates. Even so, this is vastly simpler than what it replaced. Also, it's a lot easier to tell just from looking at the code that it does what the requirements say it should do, since the mappings in the code correspond to tables in the requirements document. (Before I wrote this code, I had to rewrite the requirements document so that this stuff was all defined in a table. The original code was a mess because the requirements were a mess too. Rewriting the requirements to make them clearer exposed bugs in the requirements, too.)

It's worth emphasizing that it's pretty easy to write a unit test that covers 100% of this code. It's also worth emphasizing that the complexity of this code scales linearly with the number of disposition codes, predicates, and updates that it supports; if case or if statements were used, it would scale exponentially.

    /// <summary>
    /// Update a sentence's status to Completed [401110]
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="senRow"></param>
    /// <param name="eventDate"></param>
    private static void CompleteSentence(DataRow senRow, DateTime eventDate)
    {
        senRow.SetField("SenStatus", "401110");
        senRow.SetField("SenStatusDate", eventDate);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Update a sentence's status to Terminated [401120]
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="senRow"></param>
    /// <param name="eventDate"></param>
    private static void TerminateSentence(DataRow senRow, DateTime eventDate)
    {
        senRow.SetField("SenStatus", "401120");
        senRow.SetField("SenStatusDate", eventDate);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Returns true if a sentence is a DEJ sentence.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="senRow"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    private static bool DEJSentence(DataRow senRow)
    {
        return Api.ParseCode(senRow.Field<string>("SenType")) == "431320";
    }


    /// <summary>
    /// Returns true if a sentence is a Diversion sentence.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="senRow"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    private static bool DiversionSentence(DataRow senRow)
    {
        return Api.ParseCode(senRow.Field<string>("SenType")).StartsWith("43");
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// These are predicates that test a sentence row to see if it should be updated
    /// if it lives under a charge disposed with the specified disposition type.
    /// 
    /// For instance, if the PDDispositionCode is 413320, any DEJ sentence under the
    /// charge should be updated.
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly Dictionary<string, Func<DataRow, bool>> PDSentenceTests = 
        new Dictionary<string, Func<DataRow, bool>>
    {
        {"411610", DiversionSentence},  // diversion successful
        {"413320", DEJSentence},        // DEJ successful
        {"442110", DiversionSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful
        {"442111", DiversionSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful
        {"442112", DiversionSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful
        {"442120", DEJSentence}         // DEJ unsuccessful
    };

    /// <summary>
    /// These are the update actions that are applied to the sentence rows which pass the
    /// sentence test for the specified disposition type.
    /// 
    /// For instance, if the PDDispositionCode is 442110, sentences that pass the sentence
    /// test should be terminated.
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly Dictionary<string, Action<DataRow, DateTime>> PDSentenceUpdates = 
        new Dictionary<string, Action<DataRow, DateTime>>
    {
        {"411610", CompleteSentence},   // diversion successful (completed)
        {"413320", CompleteSentence},   // DEJ successful (completed)
        {"442110", TerminateSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful (terminated)
        {"442111", TerminateSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful (terminated)
        {"442112", TerminateSentence},  // diversion unsuccessful (terminated)
        {"442120", TerminateSentence}   // DEJ unsuccessful (terminated)
    };

    private void PDUpdateSentencesFromNewDisposition()
    {
        foreach (DataRow chargeRow in PDChargeRows
            .Where(x => PDSentenceTests.ContainsKey(x.Field<string>("PDDispositionCode"))))
        {
            string disp = chargeRow.Field<string>("PDDispositionCode");
            foreach (DataRow s in CHGRows[chargeRow]
                .ChildRows("CAS-SUBCRM-CHG-SEN")
                .Where(x => PDSentenceTests[disp](x)))
            {
                PDSentenceUpdates[disp](s, EventDate);
            }
        }
    }