defining-multiple-clauses-in-an-anonymous-function.md

Defining Multiple Clauses In An Anonymous Function

Anonymous functions often take the approach of doing a single thing with the inputs, regardless of their shape or values. There is no need to limit ourselves though. The same pattern matching that we use all over our Elixir programs can be utilized to define multiple clauses in an anonymous function as well.

Consider the following example:

iex> my_function = fn
  {:ok, x} -> "Everything is ok: #{x}"
  {:error, x} -> "There was an error: #{x}"
end
#Function<6.52032458/1 in :erl_eval.expr/5>

We can then invoke our anonymous function using the bound variable to see what results we get with different kinds of inputs.

iex> my_function.({:ok, 123})
"Everything is ok: 123"
iex> my_function.({:error, "be warned"})
"There was an error: be warned"

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