something like "if" that returns a value?

[David Brown]

"Paul Rudin" <Paul_Rudin at scientia.com> wrote in message
news:ur8dss7w6.fsf at scientia.com...
> >>>>> "AM" == Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
>
>  AM> Paul Rudin wrote:
>  >> .... lisp's if:
>  >>
>  >> (if x y z)
>  >>
>  >> which returns y if x is true and z otherwise.
>  >>
>  >> ... is there a succinct way of expressing this in the base language?
>
> [snip urls]
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> Seems like the executive summary is : "No" :-)
>

There are ways to do it, but it's a matter of how general a solution you
want, and whether it would be better to express the code in other ways.
However, you might try:
    (y, z)[not x]
I think that will give the required result in most cases, but at a definite
cost in readability.