[erlang-questions] How about a new warning? Was: Re: trouble with erlang or erlang is a ghetto

[Steve Vinoski]

2011/8/3 Frédéric Trottier-Hébert <fred.hebert@REDACTED>:
> On 2011-08-02, at 01:59 AM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
>
>> 2. Is matching against an already-bound variable a check we want?
>
> To me, matching against an already-bound variable is is a valid assertion, as much as 'ok = function_call()' might be, and as implicit as '{ok, Pid}' or '{error, already_started}' might be. Matching on already-bound variables is part of my standard code when trying to crash early when possible, and also part of many basic test suites that simply do pattern matching here and there. To me it's as basic as using the same variable twice in a single pattern (f([A,A,B,B|_]) when A =/= B -> ...), or something similar with records.
>
> I would likely not use the check at all, and if it were to be added, would prefer it to be a compiler argument (which could be enabled in -compile(...).) I foresee little use of such warnings for myself and would dislike to see it becoming a default setting.

I completely agree. I use matching this way quite a bit, especially in
testing, and wouldn't want to see any warnings for it by default.

--steve