# The `guard` Haskell `Alternative` function brought to Rust
The [`guard!`] macro.
The [`guard!`] macro implements a control-flow sugar that occurs very often in common Rust code:
```
fn foo(cond: bool) -> Option<i32> {
if !cond {
return None;
}
// do something useful
Some(42)
}
```
This pattern of testing arguments and early-returning with an error is very typical.
Unfortunately, the [`?`] operator doesn’t help us here because we want to early-return on a
boolean value, not an error value.
A not very idiomatic and weird way to rewrite that:
```
fn foo(cond: bool) -> Option<i32> {
if cond { Some(()) } else { None }?;
Some(42)
}
```
This crate provides the [`guard!`] macro — analoguous to the [`guard`] Haskell `Alternative`
function — that helps early-return from a function if a predicate is `false`:
```
#![feature(try_trait)]
use try_guard::guard;
fn foo(cond: bool) -> Option<i32> {
guard!(cond);
Some(42)
}
```
## Custom guard types
This crate also allows you to _guard_ to any time that implements [`Try<Error = NoneError>`]. For
instance, the following works:
```
#![feature(try_trait)]
use std::ops::Try;
use std::option::NoneError;
use try_guard::guard;
enum MyGuard<T> {
Just(T),
Nothing
}
impl<T> MyGuard<T> {
fn new(x: T) -> Self {
MyGuard::Just(x)
}
fn none() -> Self {
MyGuard::Nothing
}
}
impl<T> Try for MyGuard<T> {
type Ok = T;
type Error = NoneError;
fn from_error(_: Self::Error) -> Self {
MyGuard::none()
}
fn from_ok(x: Self::Ok) -> Self {
MyGuard::new(x)
}
fn into_result(self) -> Result<Self::Ok, Self::Error> {
match self {
MyGuard::Just(x) => Ok(x),
MyGuard::Nothing => Err(NoneError)
}
}
}
fn foo(cond: bool) -> MyGuard<i32> {
guard!(cond);
MyGuard::new(42)
}
```
# Feature flags
- The `"try-trait"` flag allows to use `guard!` with any type that implements
[`Try<Error = NoneError>`]. Disabling this will make `guard!` work only with
[`Option`]. **Enabled by default.**
- **This feature currently requires a nightly build.**
[`guard!`]: guard
[`guard`]: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.12.0.0/docs/Control-Monad.html#v:guard
[`?`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ops/trait.Try.html
[`Try<Error = NoneError>`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ops/trait.Try.html