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Conditionals with multiple tests?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg24104] Conditionals with multiple tests?
  • From: "A. E. Siegman" <siegman at stanford.edu>
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 00:51:57 -0400 (EDT)
  • Organization: Stanford University
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Let's say I want to assign values to three variables p1, p2, p3 that 
will depend on five different (and nonoverlapping) tests test1 to test 5.

One way to do this is obviously

      p1 = Which[test1, value11, test2, value12, . . . ]         
      p2 = Which[test1, value21, test2, value22, . . . ]   
      p3 = Which[test1, value31, test2, value32, . . . ]

But a more compact and (for me anyway) neater approach is

   Which[test1, p1=value11; p2=value21; p3=value31,
              test2, p1=value21; p2=value22; p3=value32,
              test3, . . . 
              test4, . . . 
              test5, . . . ]

Is this form legal?  That is, can one use:

      Which[test1, expr1, test2, expr2, . . .]

where expr1, expr2, . . . may be compound expressions?

(I would say that The Mathematica Book is not at all clear on this 
point, as regards either Which[] or If[].)

If not, is there a legal way to implement the basic objective?


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