[erlang-questions] Function Declaration Syntax

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 22:23, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
> No good reason. Erlang evolved from Prolog and that how it was done in
> Prolog
> no deep thought was involved ..

Interestingly, that is also the style of Haskell:

len :: [a] -> Integer
len [] = 0
len (x : xs) = 1 + (len xs)

And also of Standard ML:

fun len [] = 0
  | len (x :: xs) = 1 + (len xs)

..

My usual rewrite in many cases is to use a case. It almost notates as
the original idea of a simplification of the syntax:

len(L) ->
  case L of
    [] -> 0;
    [_|R] -> 1 + len(R)
  end.


-- 
J.