Re: Replace trivial pcase occurrences in the Emacs sources

["Clément Pit-Claudel" <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>]

On 24/10/2018 12.00, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Clément Pit-Claudel <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>
>> The repetition of "eq" in each "cond" branch just looks redundant to me
> 
> If that's what bugs you, then how about
> 
>   (setq foo (assoc bar '((1 . one) (2 . two) ...)))

This only works for constant branch bodies, and I find it marginally harder to read (especially if a default value is specified).
But I agree that it's not a bad solution when the branch body is constant.
For large collections, I imagine you would use a hashtable? Is that how the switch bytecode is implemented? IIUC, cond and pcase will be translated to a switch, but not assoc, even with a constant association list.

>> and I have no trouble reading the pcase forms.
> 
> Please don't forget those who will read your code.  A code is written
> once, but read many times.  It should be readable and
> self-explanatory.

Of course. Note that I mentioned reading the pcase forms, not writing them. I'm just pointing out that there are readers who find pcase more readable than either assoc or cond with eq tests.