[erlang-questions] "prefix" ++ Rest = Something

[Stefan Hellkvist]

Hi,

Erlang has this syntactic sugar for matching string prefixes (
http://erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/expressions.html#id80508) where you
can do:

"prefix" ++ Rest = "prefixsomething"

, which would bind Rest to "something" in this case.


I'm curious why however it is ok to do:

1> "prefix" ++ Rest = "prefixsomething".
"prefixsomething"
2> Rest.
"something"


but it is not ok to do:

1> Prefix = "prefix".
"prefix"
2> Prefix ++ Rest = "prefixsomething".
* 1: illegal pattern


Is it because this syntactic sugar is transformed more or less as a
preprocessing step where the value of Prefix needs to be known, or why else
is "Prefix ++ Rest = Something" not allowed even when Prefix is bound?

/Stefan
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