Adding functional style pattern matching to Python

Posted on: Thu 27 October 2011

One of the nicest features of functional programming languages like Haskell and Erlang is pattern matching. An example, from Learn You Some Erlang:

greet(male, Name) ->
    io:format("Hello, Mr. ~s!", [Name]);
greet(female, Name) ->
    io:format("Hello, Mrs. ~s!", [Name]);
greet(_, Name) ->
    io:format("Hello, ~s!", [Name]).

The …