How can I use coalescing operator in Haxe?

Question

As I mentioned in the question,

How can I use coalescing operator in Haxe?

Answer 1

Haxe does not have a null coalescing operator like C#'s ??.

That being said, it's possible to achieve something similar with macros. It looks like somebody has already written a library that does exactly this a few years ago. Here's an example from its readme:

var s = Sys.args()[0];
var path = s || '/default/path/to/../';

It uses the existing || operator because macros can not introduce entirely new syntax.

---

However, personally I would probably prefer a static extension like this:

class StaticExtensions {
    public static function or<T>(value:T, defaultValue:T):T {
        return value == null ? defaultValue : value;
    }
}

using StaticExtensions;

class Main {
    static public function main() {
        var foo:String = null;
        trace(foo.or("bar")); // bar
    }
}

Instead of making your own, you could also consider using the safety library, which has a number of additional static extensions for Null<T> and features for dealing with null in general.

Answer 2

Use this addon:

https://github.com/skial/nco

Then, type

var value = a || 'backup value';

instead of

var value = (a == null) ? 'backup value' : a;

Answer 3

You can also utilize abstracts instead of macros for this purpose

class Test {
  static function main() {
    trace("Haxe is great!");
    var s:Ory<String> = "hi!";
    trace(s || "I don't get picked");
    s = null;
    trace(s || "I get picked");
    trace(s + "!");
  }
}
@:forward abstract Ory<T>(T) from T to T {
  @:op(a||b) public inline function or(b:T):Ory<T> {
    return this != null ? this : b;
  }
}