[m-dev.] Syntactic sugar for functor matching

[Tyson Dowd]

On 31-Oct-2001, Ralph Becket <rafe at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> Occasionally one comes across code like this:
> 
> p(constructor1(_, _, _), ...)             :- ...
> p(constructor2(_, _, _, _, _), ...)       :- ...
> p(constructor3(_, _, _, _), ...)          :- ...
> p(constructor4(_, _, _, _, _, _, _), ...) :- ...
> 
> Which looks rather awkward.  Would there be any merit in extending
> the language so that one could write
> 
> p(constructor1/3, ...) :- ...
> p(constructor2/5, ...) :- ...
> p(constructor3/4, ...) :- ...
> p(constructor4/7, ...) :- ...
> 
> or something similar (I am aware that overloading `/' this way is
> probably not a good thing.)
> 
> On the other hand, this is perhaps just too infrequent a "problem" to
> worry about.

For what it is worth, I've often wished we had such a thing.

-- 
       Tyson Dowd           # 
                            #  Surreal humour isn't everyone's cup of fur.
     trd at cs.mu.oz.au        # 
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd #
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