[erlang-questions] Tuple Matching Question

[Jared Kofron]

Hi Santosh,

No, you can't pattern match on the head of a tuple, because a tuple doesn't
have a head in the same sense that a list does.

The size of the tuple is part of its type - {A,B,C} is of type {any(),
any(), any()}, whereas [A,B,C] has type [any()].  If I remove the first
element of [any()], I get something of type [any()], whereas if I remove
the first element of {any(), any()}, it's of type {any()}.

So there's no cons operator for tuples in the same way that there is for
lists, because adding/removing some element of a tuple actually changes its
type.

That's how I think of it, anyhow.

On Tue Dec 09 2014 at 11:04:32 AM Imants Cekusins <imantc@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi Santosh,
>
> element(1,{a,b,c}).
> returns a
>
> http://www.erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/data_types.html#id64155
> _______________________________________________
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