[erlang-questions] Tuple Matching Question

[Santosh Kumar]

Hi Jared & Imants,
Thank you for your responses. Makes sense.

Best,
Santosh

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 2:18 PM, Jared Kofron <jared.kofron@REDACTED> wrote:

> 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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>
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