Re: Question on pcase

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Michael Heerdegen <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 23:19:18 +0200
> 
> > To be frank, I'm not a fan of `pcase', and really prefer a "for dummies"
> > coding style. But if it makes other people feel more productive, I'm
> > fine with it as long as I can read and debug it.
> >
> > One piece that I'm missing currently is the ability to eval a `pcase'
> > pattern.
> 
> Did you try to `macroexpand' a pcase form?  The result is readable,
> though a bit long.
> 
> Note that `pcase' doesn't set variables, it is a binding construct.
> 
> Since the "matching" part and the "binding" part aren't separate, but
> binding happens as a side effect while matching, your approach to
> understand the thing seems not good to me.
> 
> IME the best way to transform pcase expressions into a readable form is
> to learn to read them.  I can only advertise to give it a try.  A good
> starting point is
> 
>    (info "(elisp) Pattern matching case statement")
> 
> (can be improved...)
> 
> But I totally understand if you don't want to learn it.  FWIW I never
> understood bash syntax, and also don't want to learn it :-P

Maybe we should have some higher-level facility to expand a pcase into
a human-readable form.  Would something like this be possible and
useful?