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

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

The matching is always performed AS IF it was performed strictly top-down.
The pattern matching compiler only rearranges clauses when that will not
change the meaning of the program.

/Bjorn

"Seth Warn" <seth.warn@REDACTED> writes:

> I wish I had looked at that code twice before posting, I wasn't
> thinking about the guard.  In any case, I'm still curious about the
> clause reordering mentioned in the referenced post.
> 
> Seth Warn
> University of Kansas
> seth.warn@REDACTED
> warn@REDACTED
> 
> On 2/19/07, Seth Warn <seth.warn@REDACTED> wrote:
> > 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
> >
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-- 
Björn Gustavsson, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB