() () Tue, 28 Dec 2021 09:28:32 +0100 > Ah, right! The ellipses are a tail that need to follow a > head. No, the ellipses tell the matcher that the symbol to its left acutally stands for "zero or more of this". Consequently, you have to somehow [1] use those ellipses on the right hand side (aka template) whenever you use them on the left hand side (aka pattern) and vice versa. I think we're saying the same thing, but in any case, i understand what you're saying. > I guess i was confused by the documentation's use of > ellipses in the conventional sense rather than the literal > sense: I think of the ellipses as a kind of funny Kleene star. Not really at home in any world: in the regular world, because it isn't a star, in the Scheme world, because it is postfix. That's a really good analogy, IMHO. It's an operator of sorts. [examples] Yes, it's becoming more clear to me now. For the idiomatic part, I'll have to defer to those with more chevrons ;-) :-D I think the ‘otherwise’ clause is a bit unwieldy; it presumes normal form 3 (attribute lists always present). However, i couldn't find a way to match "any element". ISTM the element portion (first symbol in the form) MUST be non-variable. -- Thien-Thi Nguyen ----------------------------------------------- (defun responsep (query) ; (2021) Software Libero (pcase (context query) ; = Dissenso Etico (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml)) ...)) 748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA --------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502