Match Specifications

[Sean Hinde]

> Francesco Cesarini wrote:
> > 
> > Hi!
> > I got stuck with match specifications

Sorry to misquote :) I don't think anyone really thinks that the pattern
match syntax is all that elegant though.

Maybe there is scope for something cleaner for at least the subset used in
ets:select.

something like:

A="an",
M = matchfun({tab, "se" ++ A, B}) when is_integer(B) -> '$_';
            ({tab, "se" ++ A, B}) -> B
    end,
ets:select(tab, M).

instead of
M = [{{tab, "se" ++ A, '$1'}, [{is_integer, '$1'}], ['$_']},
     {{tab, "se" ++ A, '$2'}, [], ['$2']}],
ets:select(tab, M).

This example isn't too bad but more complex examples get seriously
unreadable to anyone not well up on syntax trees (inluding me).

We could get rid of '$1', '$2' etc by letting the compiler turn unbound
variables into '$1' etc internally. We'd maybe keep '$_' and '$$' as nice
shortcuts for complete results.

Thoughts anyone? Maybe a clever precompiler hack by someone versed in the
ways of such things could deliver this?

Sean



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