3 different ways to build a list with conditional elements in Elixir (and what that has to do with application startup)

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There are other ways to achieve such results for example using recursive functions.

defmodule Example do
  def sample(list) do
    List.foldr(list, [], fn
      {false, _child_spec}, acc -> acc
      {true, child_spec}, acc -> [child_spec | acc]
      child_spec, acc -> [child_spec | acc]
    end)
  end

  def sample2([]), do: []
  def sample2([{false, _child_spec} | rest]), do: sample2(rest)
  def sample2([{true, child_spec} | rest]), do: sample2([child_spec | rest])
  def sample2([child_spec | rest]), do: [child_spec | sample2(rest)]
end

input = [:not_tuple, {false, :skip_me}, {true, :no_skip}]

Example.sample(input)
Example.sample2(input)

Helpful resources:

  1. List.foldr/3
  2. Patterns and Guards
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