Alternative loops and conditionals in Ruby and Perl

Ruby gets a lot from Perl - including its eclecticness in having a wide variety of alternative ways of doing similar things - and no more so than in loops and conditionals. Not only do you have an if but also an unless. Not only do you have a while but also an until. And not only can you write these as conditional blocks (with the conditional code after the condition) but also the other way round as conditional modifiers.

so if you don't like this:

if (n <= 4)

  c = c + 3

  end

try this:

c += 3 unless n > 4

Further examples [here] and something similar in Perl [here].

Is all this variety a good thing? If used with care, yes ... but if thrown about with gay abandon, leading to unmaintainable code, probably not ... which means that in both Ruby and Perl you really need to think about code quality and standards from day one. Or should I say from before day one ...
(written 2010-07-28, updated 2010-07-30)

Associated topics are indexed under

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  [2972] Some more advanced Perl examples from a recent course - (2010-09-27)
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R104 - Ruby - Control Structures
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  [3254] Multiple inputs, multiple out, ruby functions - (2011-04-19)
  [3253] Is this number between? Does this list include? - Ruby - (2011-04-18)
  [3159] Returning multiple values from a function call in various languages - a comparison - (2011-02-06)
  [3158] Ruby training - some fresh examples for string handling applications - (2011-02-05)
  [3156] Splitting data reading code from data processing code - Ruby - (2011-02-04)
  [2975] Why do I need brackets in Ruby ... or Perl, Python, C or Java - (2010-09-29)
  [2619] Passing code to procedures and yield in Ruby - (2010-02-02)
  [2471] A short form of if ... then ... else - (2009-10-23)
  [2287] Learning to program in Ruby - examples of the programming basics - (2009-07-15)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1891] Ruby to access web services - (2008-11-16)
  [1887] Ruby Programming Course - Saturday and Sunday - (2008-11-16)
  [1870] What to do with a huge crop of apples - (2008-11-04)
  [1738] Clean code, jump free (Example in Lua) - (2008-08-06)
  [1587] Some Ruby programming examples from our course - (2008-03-21)
  [1163] A better alternative to cutting and pasting code - (2007-04-26)
  [995] Ruby's case - no break - (2006-12-17)
  [985] Equality in Ruby - == eql? and equal? - (2006-12-14)
  [960] 1st, 2nd, 3rd revisited in Ruby - (2006-12-02)

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