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Discussion on: Which Data Structure Should I Use? An Elixir Cheat Sheet

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alephnaught2tog profile image
Max Cerrina

Man, you know what I find really hard? No joke -- it's the syntax/writing differences between maps and structs and things with atom keys or string keys and accessing with a dot or brackets or whatever. I swear I always pick the wrong one and I just cannot keep straight in my head which is which and how to tell what I should be using.

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tmtasim profile image
Taner Tasim

Its easy, if the keys are atoms than with . :) If they are with String you cannot access with . In my head the two dots that are used for atom declaration are reminding me that i must use . while trying to access. One more thing worth mention is that if you try to access something with . and there is no such key it will give you error - key ... not found in .. but if you use strings as keys even the key is not there, it will just return nil it will not give you error