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Andrew Sabato
8,168 PointsWhy is Ruby's Else if statement called elsif but in other languages its else if. (Why the wrong spelling?)
Why is Ruby's Else if statement called elsif but in other languages its else if. (Why the wrong spelling?)
3 Answers
Michael Hulet
47,912 PointsIt's not wrong spelling. It's just what Ruby chose to use. It's an arbitrary decision that the language designers decided to make. That being said, it's generally just the C-style/inspired languages that use else if, which includes a broad set of languages. For example, JavaScript (a C-inspired language) uses else if, but Python (which doesn't draw much inspiration from C) uses elif. In summary, it's not wrong or anything, but it's just what Yukihiro Matsumoto (the creator of Ruby) liked best
Erika Suzuki
20,299 PointsI know right! It's just to make the language "unique" and probably to save a few types on the keyboard. But if I'm going to choose between "elif" (Python) and "elsif" (Ruby), since both are misspelled anyway, I'd choose "elif" since it's shorter.
Randy Eichelberger
Courses Plus Student 787 PointsOn a side note, you can use else if in Ruby, you just need to close it out with an end as opposed to elsif that allows you to skip the end.