[erlang-questions] Pattern matching in function calls

[Dave Challis]

Does the order of patterns in a function call matter?  Are they all 
tested, or will erlang stop trying to match them once a mismatch has 
been found?

As an example, if I've got:

foo(<<SomeLargeBinary>>, a) -> a;
foo(<<SomeLargeBinary>>, b) -> b.

will the above be any slower than defining:

foo(a, <<SomeLargeBinary>>) -> a;
foo(b, <<SomeLargeBinary>>) -> b.

Will the <<SomeLargeBinary>> attempt to be matched in every case?  Is it 
something worth thinking about, or will the compiler optimise this?

Thanks,

-- 
Dave Challis
dsc@REDACTED