Alternative way to disambiguate "dangling else" in a cl-loop

Question

I need to achieve in a cl-loop the following conditional written in pseudocode.

if (flag1) {
  if (flag2) {return ...} 
} else {
  return ...
}

Note that it is equivalent to

if (flag1 && flag2) {return ...} 
if (!flag1) {return ...}

which undesirably repeats flag1 twice.

What I have done is:

(cl-loop ...
  if (flag) do 'nothing and
    if (...) return ... end
  else 
    return ...)

The do 'nothing and looks a bit hacky to me, but I cannot omit it as it's part of the nested if syntax. Are there alternative (and clearer) ways to do this ? Maybe using cl-block or by outsourcing the conditionals to another function ?

EDIT (further clarification):

The use of the keywords and and end could help to disambiguate dangling else (which is the conditional pattern given in this question).

Inspired from @John Kitchin's example, consider the following snippets and note the indentation:

(cl-loop
 with flag1 = nil
 with flag2 = t
 if flag1 return 3
 if flag2 return 1
 else return 2)

returns 1.

On the other hand,

(cl-loop
 with flag1 = nil
 with flag2 = t
 if flag1 return 3 and
   if flag2 return 1 end
 else return 2)

returns 2.

Thus, to accomplish the desired conditional, the keywords and and end are required.

Now, going back to the initial question: how to achieve the latter conditional, without a clause at the return 3 position, ignoring potential infinite loops ?

It seems impossible per se: according to the documentation, the <clause> in if <condition> <clause> should be an accumulation, do, return, if, or unless clause.

My solution is replacing it with do 'nothing or do (ignore) to fulfill the documentation's requirement, or use the equivalent yet repetitive conditional (undesired, see above), but I'm looking for alternatives.

Answer 1

I think this is what you want:

(let ((flag1 nil)
      (flag2 nil))
  (cl-loop
   if flag1
   if flag2 return 1
   else return 0
   else return 2))

if flag1 is nil, you get 2 if flag1 is t, and flag2 is nil you get 0 if flag1 is t, and flag2 is t you get 1

---

Or to replicate the original pseudo code (complete with its infinite loop scenario):

  (cl-loop
   if flag1
   if flag2 return 1 end
   else return 2)