Re: The poor state of documentation of pcase like things.

[Phillip Lord]

John Wiegley <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>>> Kaushal Modi <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I would welcome a short tutorial on how (and why) to use pcase.
>
> There are several examples shown here:
>
>     http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PatternMatching
>
> pcase makes a lot more sense if you're used to pattern matching in functional
> languages, where you describe a pattern (not unlike destructuring-bind) whose
> "shape" is intended to match the set of shapes you want to successful match
> against.
>
> Since pattern matching like this isn't something I had ever encountered
> outside of FP, I agree that a tutorial is in order. I'm willing to volunteer
> for this.

I'll have a go at the docstrings.

I only found out about pcase recently. It's a very useful tool, and it
deserves more use. Could I suggest it be promoted in the manual a
little. Currently, it's a subnode of "conditionals", but pattern match
is really a form of control flow in its own right.

Phil