being robust

ID:982142
 
Sep 18 2012, 11:49 pm (Edited on Sep 19 2012, 1:58 am)
Posting this here because it will hopefully help new developers. It explains it in the DM reference but its kind of unclear.
If you use the conditional OR operator, it will stop and return the value of the first true condition. This can be very useful at times

Example below
var/what = null

    if(!what || !what.len)
        world<<"youll never get an error doing this"
        return
    //////////////////////
    if(!what.len || !what)
        world<<"if what does in fact not exist, youll get null.len error."
        return
Sep 19 2012, 1:46 am
Not only does it stop, it returns the first true value.
var a = 2
var b = 0
var c = 3
src << (a || b)  //  2
src << (c || a)  //  3
Sep 19 2012, 1:55 am
That's what I (thought I said) meant to say.
Useful for other functions as well

proc/tt()   
    var/a = 0
    var/b = 2
    var/c = 3
    return (a || (b && c))

Returns a value of 3