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Daniel Kuppitz commented on TINKERPOP-968: ------------------------------------------ I'm fine with the addition of an {{optional()}} method that is implemented as {{coalesce(traversal, identity)}}. {code} public default <E2> GraphTraversal<S, E2> optional(final Traversal<?, E2> optionalTraversal) { return this.coalesce(optionalTraversal, __.identity()); } {code} > Add first class support for an optional traversal > ------------------------------------------------- > > Key: TINKERPOP-968 > URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TINKERPOP-968 > Project: TinkerPop > Issue Type: Improvement > Components: process > Affects Versions: 3.1.0-incubating > Reporter: pieter martin > > Both SparQL and Cypher use the "Optional" keyword to indicate an optional > traversal. SQL uses the "left join". > Gremlin has no first class support for an optional traversal. It can be > achieved with the choose step but it is verbose, unintuitive and not what the > choose step is intended for. > The benefits of optional traversals are many. In particular it makes it > trivial to load complete subgraphs/trees with one easy to read intuitive > gremlin statement. -- This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA (v6.3.4#6332)