Control flow

We're now introducing control-flow constructs. In Elixir, they aren't used as often as in traditional imperative languages, because we can fulfill our control-flow needs, using a mix of pattern matching, multi-clause functions, and guard clauses. Whenever you're about to use one of the constructs we're presenting in this section, stop and check whether it's possible to employ a more functional approach. Code without these traditional control-flow constructs is usually easier to understand and test. If you get to a point where you have nested conditionals, it's almost guaranteed you can simplify it by using one of the approaches I mentioned earlier. Either way, you'll occasionally use these constructs, so it's important to know they exist.