Re: pcase defuns

[Andrew Hyatt <ahyatt@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 12:15 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> 
wrote: 

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>   > To give a flavor of what it looks like in practice, here's a 
>   > few  pattern defuns from the test: 
> 
>   > (defun-pattern fibonacci 
>   >     "Compute the fibonacci sequence." 
>   >      ((0) 0) ((1) 1) ((n) 
>   >        (+ (fibonacci (- n 1)) 
>   >             (fibonacci (- n 2))))) 
> 
> For defining how to compute the value, it is clear and simple. 
> (Do the patterns handle decomposing lists and other compound 
> objects?)

Yes, it does this.
 
> But defining how to compute the value is not the only job a 
> defun needs to do.  It also needs to record argument names.

The way I look at it, it does do this, but it's just structured 
differently. The normal defun as one arglist. Mine has one per 
matching clause, which means that it can take a variety of 
different arguments, all matching. And the arglist and the 
matching clauses are the same thing, so the arglist can be (n), or 
('foo n), or (1 2 (3 n)), etc.  Yes, it's weird, but I think the 
differentiation here is useful, see my next point.

> Also, it doesn't seem to offer a way to make the function accept 
> other arguments beyond the one that the pattern will be applied 
> to. 
> 
> So I think it should take an argument list, and bind all the 
> argument variables, like this: 
> 
>     (defun-pattern fibonacci (n) 
>         "Compute the Nth fibonacci number." 
>          ((0) 0) ((1) 1) (t 
>            (+ (fibonacci (- n 1)) 
>               (fibonacci (- n 2))))) 
>  
>     (defun-pattern sum (x y) 
>         "Compute the sum of natural numbers X and Y." 
>          ((0) y) (t 
>            (1+ (add (1- x) y))))


Thank you for the feedback and your examples.

There's a tension here: if I make this fit more with existing 
patterns, it becomes something that seems closer to just a defun 
with a pcase in it. Maybe a bit cleaner. In particular, with your 
proposal, we lose the ability to have fairly different arg 
patterns, with different numbers of args, or different 
destructuring patterns. However, I admit that my proposal, without 
a single arglist, is odd, and may be seen as too esoteric by most.

I'm curious to hear more opinions.

>
> -- 
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)