[erlang-questions] In what order are pattern matching clauses evaluated?

[Seth Warn]

Hello,

While trying out Erlang, I noticed the following factorial function works:

fac(N) when N > 0 ->
    N * fac(N-1);
fac(0) -> 1.

"Ah ha," I said, "the pattern matching is not strictly top-down."  Is
there a resource somewhere that describes how the clauses may/will be
rearranged?  Searching the archive, the closest thing I found was this
post, which says that the clauses will be grouped by type:

http://www.erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2000-May/001267.html

Thanks,

Seth Warn
University of Kansas
seth.warn@REDACTED
warn@REDACTED