Course of Raku / Essentials / Control flow essentials / Conditional checks

Using elsif

So far, we’ve learned if and else. What if you want to organise a chain of tests? There are at least two ways to do that in Raku (actually, there are even more).

One of the possibilities is to use the chain of if, elsif, and else blocks. Note the spelling of elsif. It is neither elseif nor else if.

my $x = prompt 'Enter the number: ';
if $x > 100 {
    say "$x is bigger than 100.";
}
elsif $x > 50 {
    say "$x is bigger than 50.";
}
elsif $x > 25 {
    say "$x is bigger than 25.";
}
else {
    say "$x is 25 or smaller.";
}

In this program, there are three branches and three tests one after another. As soon as one of the conditions turns out to be True, the corresponding code block is run. If neither check is True, the else block is run.

Here are a few test runs of the program that triggers all of the blocks:

$ raku t.raku
Enter the number: 120
120 is bigger than 100.

$ raku t.raku
Enter the number: 75      
75 is bigger than 50.

$ raku t.raku
Enter the number: 30
30 is bigger than 25.

$ raku t.raku
Enter the number: 10
10 is 25 or smaller.

An alternative way is to use the given and when pair, which we will learn in the future.

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