Re: [Haskell-beginners] Beginners Digest, Vol 41, Issue 30

22 Nov 2011

...
On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:46:37 -0800
Lee Short  wrote:
...
hlint gives me a parse error on a clause using DoIfThenElse, even 
if
I have the language pragma.  I don't see any hlint options to get
around that, are there any?
Is it considered good style to write code like this?
if "" == results
 then return True
 else return False
The obvious way rewrite below just seems clunky to me (though I can
see how others might prefer it to the code above).
return $ if "" == results
          then True
          else False
You've just pressed one of my language-independent style hot
buttons. Why on earth are you using an if/then/else here? What's 
wrong
with the straightforward:
return "" == results
The expression results in a boolean, and it's even the one you want 
to
return. So why not return it?
That's not my actual code, I was just using it as a simplified example 
 and didn't put a lot of thought into it.  My actual code is

 if delete /= ""
    then if exists
          then deleteFromTable req t key
          else return ()
    else if exists
          then updateTable req t key
          else insertTable req t

 I'd love to hear comments on how to make that more idiomatic, if 
 there's a way.