Conditional Expressions

if/else expressions evaluate different branches depending on if two expressions evaluate to the same value:

foo := if "2" == "2" { "Good!" } else { "1984" }

bar:
  @echo "{{foo}}"

$ just bar
Good!

It is also possible to test for inequality:

foo := if "hello" != "goodbye" { "xyz" } else { "abc" }

bar:
  @echo {{foo}}

$ just bar
xyz

And match against regular expressions:

foo := if "hello" =~ 'hel+o' { "match" } else { "mismatch" }

bar:
  @echo {{foo}}

$ just bar
match

Regular expressions are provided by the regex crate, whose syntax is documented on docs.rs. Since regular expressions commonly use backslash escape sequences, consider using single-quoted string literals, which will pass slashes to the regex parser unmolested.

Conditional expressions short-circuit, which means they only evaluate one of their branches. This can be used to make sure that backtick expressions don’t run when they shouldn’t.

foo := if env_var("RELEASE") == "true" { `get-something-from-release-database` } else { "dummy-value" }

Conditionals can be used inside of recipes:

bar foo:
  echo {{ if foo == "bar" { "hello" } else { "goodbye" } }}

Note the space after the final }! Without the space, the interpolation will be prematurely closed.

Multiple conditionals can be chained:

foo := if "hello" == "goodbye" {
  "xyz"
} else if "a" == "a" {
  "abc"
} else {
  "123"
}

bar:
  @echo {{foo}}

$ just bar
abc