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Evaluate and Test

Problem

A common Scheme idiom is to return #f in the case of failure and a useful value otherwise. For example, the member function returns false when an element cannot be found, and the sublist from the first match on success. As we may want to use the result of the call we must bind it to a name and then test it. The example below shows this.

(let ((result (member 3 '(0 1 2 3 4))))
  (if result
     'found
     'not-found))

It would be nice to abstract this idiom.

Solution

The aif macro captures this common idiom. Using the aif macro, we can write the above example as:

(require (lib "aif.ss" "macro"))

(aif result (member 3 '(0 1 2 3 4))
    'found
    'not-found)

The name result is bound to the result of (member 3 '(0 1 2 3 4)). The value of result is then used in a normal if expression to choose between the true and false arms.

A slightly more complicated case occurs when the result of the expression must be compared using a predicate before we can decide which arm to take. This occurs, for example, when reading from a file.

(define (port->string-list port)
  (let ((line (read-line port)))
   (if (eof-object? line)
      (list)
      (cons line (port->string-list port)))))

The aif macro handles this case as well.

(require (lib "aif.ss" "macro"))

(define (port->string-list port)
  (aif line eof-object? (read-line port)
      (list)
      (cons line (port->string-list port))))

The definition of aif is

(define-syntax aif
  (syntax-rules ()
    ((_ name test true-arm false-arm)
     (let ((name test))
       (if name
           true-arm
           false-arm)))
    ((_ name pred test true-arm false-arm)
     (let ((name test))
       (if (pred name)
           true-arm
           false-arm)))
    ))

Discussion

The aif macro is adapted from Paul Graham's "On Lisp". It is short for anaphoric if.

Comments About This Recipe

I find this a great example and motivation for syntax-rules macros. Whether it qualifies as an idiom I am not sure about - I don't think I have seen aif in the wild except in Noel's code ;-)

-- JensAxelSoegaard - 19 May 2004

Yeah, and even I don't use it that much as I haven't got around to releasing the Schematics macro library! Anyway, I added the macro definition to maybe others will use it.

-- NoelWelsh - 19 May 2004

Contributors

-- NoelWelsh - 19 May 2004