Re: pcase ` meaning [Was: Re: Replace trivial pcase occurrences in the Emacs sources]

[Michael Heerdegen]

"Garreau, Alexandre" <address@hidden> writes:

> “(var name)”, as does racket and some common-lisp match/unify
> implementations.  And so to integrate with “`”: “,(var name)” doesn’t
> disturb me, it is okay: will bind “name” to something, pretty
> straightforward.

That would make totally sense to me.  I often found it confusing that
using a symbol which is already bound (outside of pcase) isn't turned
into an equality test.  Having an explicit `var' or `bind' for binding
variables would be nice.

> Beside lisp, all pattern matching language make their feature serve
> one purpose: the pattern look like what the data should be. adding “`”
> and “,” destroy this feature, because the pattern no longer looks like
> what is matched.

But with, for example, el-search, that suddenly looks very natural if
you can, for example, transpose the first two arguments of all `foo'
calls in your code with the rule.

   `(foo ,a ,b . ,rest) -> `(foo ,b ,a . ,rest)

The pattern exactly looks like the matched data!  Just with a different
point of view.  Using ``' is not what most people would naively use to
implement destructuring, but I don't find it unnatural or not intuitive,
no.

The above pattern would look different if we would have to write it as

  `(foo ,(var a) ,(var b) . ,(var rest))

so the implicit binding feature of symbols also makes patterns much more
readable in more complex cases, which is a big win.


Michael.