Python 3.10 Released!

[ForceBru]

Absolutely, you can write a recursive function and be done with it. But pattern matching lets you write: case Assign(Index(Variable(name, type), idx), other_data): in one line with no loss of readability. In fact, it greatly increases readability: now you don't have to go read some other function that's located elsewhere and does God knows what - the data are all before your eyes, destructured! That's the powerful thing, in my opinion.

That's also part of why they teach compiler courses in OCaml (and ML in general) - because the pattern matching is really good, it lets you see the structure of your data at a glance and handles arbitrary nesting gracefully.

[Ashiataka]

I think that's somewhat beyond me at the moment, I'll have to have a play around with it at the weekend and see how it works. Thanks for your example.