Now and then there are cases where an expression might not have a result and a default value is chosen instead. Such code typically looks like this

if exists(getSomething())
then value = getSomething()
else value = "default"

(please let me know if there is a better alternative)

This is error-prone because you have to write the expression which yields the result twice. Would it be possible to introduce a built-in defaults(... | ...) expression (or similar) which simplifies this? E.g.:

value = defaults(getSomething() | "default")

It might also be useful to support an arbitrary number of alternative default values, each as fallback for the previous one, e.g. defaults(first() | second() | third() | ...).