A Quick Peek (if let)

Sometimes you don’t want the whole sorting hat ceremony. You just want to take a quick peek inside a box to see if there’s something in it. 👀 That’s exactly what if let is for!

The Big Idea if let is a shortcut for match when you only care about one case. It's perfect for peeking inside an Option to grab a value if it's there.

The long way with match

Remember Option? It’s Some(value) when there’s something, or None when it’s empty. With match, peeking inside looks like this:

match treasure {
    Some(gold) => println!("Found {} gold!", gold),
    None => {}
}

That None => {} line does nothing — we only added it because match makes us cover every case. A bit of wasted typing! 😅

The quick way with if let

if let lets us skip the case we don’t care about. We say: “if this value is Some with something inside, give me that something and run my code.”

Think of it like this… if let is like checking a delivery box. 📦 If something's inside, you take it out and use it. If it's empty, you just close it and move on.

Let’s peek inside a box

fn main() {
    let treasure: Option<i32> = Some(100);

    if let Some(gold) = treasure {
        println!("You found {} gold coins! 🪙", gold);
    }

    let empty: Option<i32> = None;

    if let Some(gold) = empty {
        println!("This won't print: {}", gold);
    } else {
        println!("The box was empty. 🕳️");
    }
}
</textarea>
<textarea class="rk-out">
You found 100 gold coins! 🪙
The box was empty. 🕳️

</div> See how the first box had `Some(100)`, so we pulled out `100` and used it. The second box was `None`, so the `else` part ran instead. 🎉

Ferris says: You can add else to if let for "what to do when there's nothing." It's like a backup plan! 🦀

Watch out! The value gold only exists inside the if let braces. Once you leave the curly braces, it's gone — so use it while you're in there!

Try this! Change Some(100) to None and run it. What does the first peek do now? (Hint: it has no else, so it just stays quiet! 🤫)

## Quick quiz

When is if let the best choice?

Yes! if let is the quick peek for when just one case matters. 👀

You learned… if let is a friendly shortcut for match when only one case matters, like pulling a value out of Some, with an optional else for the empty case. You've finished World 6: Choices & Magic Sorting — get ready for your next adventure! 🚀