How can I write like "x == either 1 or 2" in a programming language?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why do most programming languages only have binary equality comparison operators?

I have had a simple question for a fairly long time--since I started learning programming languages.

I'd like to write like "if x is either 1 or 2 => TRUE (otherwise FALSE)."

But when I write it in a programming language, say in C,

( x == 1 || x == 2 )

it really works but looks awkward and hard to read. I guess it should be possible to simplify such an or operation, and so if you have any idea, please tell me. Thanks, Nathan

Answer 1

Python allows test for membership in a sequence:

if x in (1, 2):

Answer 2

Thanks Ignacio! I translate it into Ruby:

[ 1, 2 ].include?( x )

and it also works, but I'm not sure whether it'd look clear & normal. If you know about Ruby, please advise. Also if anybody knows how to write this in C, please tell me. Thanks. -Nathan

Answer 3

In php you can use

$ret = in_array($x, array(1, 2));

Answer 4

As far as I know, there is no built-in way of doing this in C. You could add your own inline function for scanning an array of ints for values equal to x....

Like so:

inline int contains(int[] set, int n, int x)
{ 
  int i;
  for(i=0; i<n; i++)
    if(set[i] == x)
      return 1;

  return 0;
}

// To implement the check, you declare the set
int mySet[2] = {1,2};
// And evaluate like this:
contains(mySet,2,x) // returns non-zero if 'x' is contained in 'mySet'

Answer 5

Err, what's wrong with it? Oh well, if you really use it a lot and hate the looks do something like this in c#:

#region minimizethisandneveropen
public bool either(value,x,y){       
    return (value == x || value == y);
}
#endregion

and in places where you use it:

if(either(value,1,2))
   //yaddayadda 

Or something like that in another language :).

Answer 6

While there are a number of quite interesting answers in this thread, I would like to point out that they may have performance implications if you're doing this kind of logic inside of a loop depending on the language. A far as for the computer to understand, the if (x == 1 || x == 2) is by far the easiest to understand and optimize when it's compiled into machine code.

Answer 7

Perl 5 with Perl6::Junction:

use Perl6::Junction 'any';
say 'yes' if 2 == any(qw/1 2 3/);

Perl 6:

say 'yes' if 2 == 1|2|3;

This version is so readable and concise I’d use it instead of the || operator.

Answer 8

return x === 1 || x === 2 in javascript

Answer 9

In .Net you can use Linq:

int[] wanted = new int{1, 2};

// you can use Any to return true for the first item in the list that passes
bool result = wanted.Any( i => i == x );

// or use Contains
bool result = wanted.Contains( x );

Although personally I think the basic || is simple enough:

bool result = ( x == 1 || x == 2 );

Answer 10

that was a lot of interesting alternatives. I am surprised nobody mentioned switch...case - so here goes:

switch(x) {
case 1:
case 2:
  // do your work
  break;
default:
  // the else part
}

1. it is more readable than having a bunch of x == 1 || x == 2 || ...
2. more optimal than having a array/set/list for doing a membership check

Answer 11

In java:

 List list = Arrays.asList(new Integer[]{1,2});
 Set set = new HashSet(list);
 set.contains(1)

Answer 12

Your approach would indeed seem more natural but that really depends on the language you use for the implementation.

Rationale for the Mess

C being a systems programming language, and fairly close to the hardware (funny though, as we used to consider a "high-level" language, as opposed to writing machine code), it's not exactly expressive.

Modern higher-level languages (again, arguable, lisp is not that modern, historically speaking, but would allow you to do that nicely) allow you to do such things by using built-in constructs or library support (for instances, using Ranges, Tuples or equivalents in languages like Python, Ruby, Groovy, ML-languages, Haskell...).

Possible Solution 1

One option for you would be to implement a function taking an array of values and checking them.

Here's a basic prototype, and I leave the implementation as an exercise to you:

int is_in(int check, int *values, int size); // returns non-zero value if check is in values

However, as you will quickly see, this is very basic and not very flexible:

• it works only on integers,
• it works only to compare identical values.

Possible Solution 2

An alternative would be to use pre-processor macros in C (or C++) to achieve a similar behavior, but beware of side effects.

Keep Going

A next step could be to pass a function pointer as an extra parameter to define the behavior at call-point, define several variants and aliases for this, and build yourself a small library of comparators.

The next step then would be to implement a similar thing in C++ using templates to do this on different types with a single implementation.

And then keep going from there to higher-level languages.

---

Pick the Right Language (or learn to let go!)

Typically, languages favoring functional programming will have built-in support for this sort of thing, for obvious reasons.

Or just learn to accept that some languages can do things that others cannot, and that depending on the job and environment, that's just the way it is.

Maybe a library implements such a thing already, than I am not aware of.

Answer 13

A try with only one non-bitwise boolean operator (not advised, not tested):

if( (x&3) ^ x ^ ((x>>1)&1) ^ (x&1) ^ 1 == 0 )

The (x&3) ^ x part should be equal to 0, this ensures that x is between 0 and 3. Other operands will only have the last bit set.

The ((x>>1)&1) ^ (x&1) ^ 1 part ensures last and second to last bits are different. This will apply to 1 and 2, but not 0 and 3.

Answer 14

When I started programming it seemed weird to me as well that instead of something like:

(1 < x < 10)

I had to write:

(1 < x && x < 10)

But this is how most programming languages work, and after a while you will get used to it.

So I believe it is perfectly fine to write

( x == 1 || x == 2 )

Writing it this way also has the advantage that other programmers will understand easily what you wrote. Using a function to encapsulate it might just make things more complicated because the other programmers would need to find that function and see what it does.

Only more recent programming languages like Python, Ruby etc. allow you to write it in a simpler, nicer way. That is mostly because these programming languages are designed to increase the programmers productivity, while the older programming languages' main goal was application performance and not so much programmer productivity.

Answer 15

An extension version in C#

step 1: create an extension method

public static class ObjectExtensions
{
    public static bool Either(this object value, params object[] array)
    {
        return array.Any(p => Equals(value, p));
    }
}

step 2: use the extension method

if (x.Either(1,2,3,4,5,6)) 
{
}
else
{
}

Answer 16

You say the notation (x==1 || x==2) is "awkward and hard to read". I beg to differ. It's different than natural language, but is very clear and easy to understand. You just need to think like a computer.

Also, the notations mentioned in this thread like x in (1,2) are semantically different then what you are really asking, they ask if x is member of the set (1,2), which is not what you are asking. What you are asking is if x equals to 1 or to 2 which is logically (and semantically) equivalent to if x equals to 1 or x equals to 2 which translates to (x==1 || x==2).

Answer 17

I doubt I'd ever do this, but to answer your question, here's one way to achieve it in C# involving a little generic type inference and some abuse of operator overloading. You could write code like this:

if (x == Any.Of(1, 2)) {
    Console.WriteLine("In the set.");
}

Where the Any class is defined as:

public static class Any {
    public static Any2<T> Of<T>(T item1, T item2) {
        return new Any2<T>(item1, item2);
    }
    public struct Any2<T> {
        T item1;
        T item2;
        public Any2(T item1, T item2) {
            this.item1 = item1;
            this.item2 = item2;
        }
        public static bool operator ==(T item, Any2<T> set) {
            return item.Equals(set.item1) || item.Equals(set.item2);
        }
        // Defining the operator== requires these three methods to be defined as well:
        public static bool operator !=(T item, Any2<T> set) {
            return !(item == set);
        }
        public override bool Equals(object obj) { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        public override int GetHashCode() { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
    }
}

You could conceivably have a number of overloads of the Any.Of method to work with 3, 4, or even more arguments. Other operators could be provided as well, and a companion All class could do something very similar but with && in place of ||.

Looking at the disassembly, a fair bit of boxing happens because of the need to call Equals, so this ends up being slower than the obvious (x == 1) || (x == 2) construct. However, if you change all the <T>'s to int and replace the Equals with ==, you get something which appears to inline nicely to be about the same speed as (x == 1) || (x == 2).

Answer 18

In T-SQL

where x in (1,2)

Answer 19

In COBOL (it's been a long time since I've even glanced briefly at COBOL, so I may have a detail or two wrong here):

IF X EQUALS 1 OR 2
...

So the syntax is definitely possible. The question then boils down to "why is it not used more often?"

Well, the thing is, parsing expressions like that is a bit of a bitch. Not when standing alone like that, mind, but more when in compound expressions. The syntax starts to become opaque (from the compiler implementer's perspective) and the semantics downright hairy. IIRC, a lot of COBOL compilers will even warn you if you use syntax like that because of the potential problems.

Answer 20

I have a macro that I use a lot that's somewhat close to what you want.

#define ISBETWEEN(Var, Low, High) ((Var) >= (Low) && (Var) <= (High))

ISBETWEEN(x, 1, 2) will return true if x is 1 or 2.

Answer 21

Pascal has a (limited) notion of sets, so you could do:

if x in [1, 2] then

(haven't touched a Pascal compiler in decades so the syntax may be off)

Answer 22

Neither C, C++, VB.net, C#.net, nor any other such language I know of has an efficient way to test for something being one of several choices. Although (x==1 || x==2) is often the most natural way to code such a construct, that approach sometimes requires the creation of an extra temporary variable:

  tempvar = somefunction(); // tempvar only needed for 'if' test:
  if (tempvar == 1 || tempvar == 2)
    ...

Certainly an optimizer should be able to effectively get rid of the temporary variable (shove it in a register for the brief time it's used) but I still think that code is ugly. Further, on some embedded processors, the most compact and possibly fastest way to write (x == const1 || x==const2 || x==const3) is:

  movf  _x,w             ; Load variable X into accumulator
  xorlw const1           ; XOR with const1
  btfss STATUS,ZERO      ; Skip next instruction if zero
   xorlw const1 ^ const2 ; XOR with (const1 ^ const2)
  btfss STATUS,ZERO      ; Skip next instruction if zero
   xorlw const2 ^ const3 ; XOR with (const2 ^ const3)
  btfss STATUS,ZERO      ; Skip next instruction if zero
   goto NOPE

That approach require two more instructions for each constant; all instructions will execute. Early-exit tests will save time if the branch is taken, and waste time otherwise. Coding using a literal interpretation of the separate comparisons would require four instructions for each constant.

If a language had an "if variable is one of several constants" construct, I would expect a compiler to use the above code pattern. Too bad no such construct exists in common languages.

(note: Pascal does have such a construct, but run-time implementations are often very wasteful of both time and code space).