How do you refer to the Match Operator when reading code?

When there is just a single name, I do read it as “name is set to value of expression” while I do read it as “pattern is applied to expression”. I try to avoid to use “pattern matches expression” to avoid confusion with ===, which I often read as “left matches right”.

Yep, I would say name is set to José as well as in Ruby for single assignments. I know it’s not an assignment, but it’s easier to say, and comparing to other languages, the final result is the same of an assignment.

I never thought about compex pattern matching like:

person = %{name: "José"}
%{name: name} = person

But I guess the @NobbZ suggestions it’s pretty clear, the code could be described like:

• “person is set to a map with the key name set to José”
• and then “the pattern for extracting the key name from a map is applied to person”

Reading it afterwards, it feels very complex at the first glance (compared to imperative code when described), but I guess that someone with a little bit of experience in FP will understand everything, and will mentally compile it to the explained code.

Anything wrong with "José" is bound to name?

Pedantically, “set to” feels strange because it suggests trivial assignment without pattern matching. Like @NobbZ said, “match” could be confused with a strict equivalence check.

Elixir’s pattern matching is enabled by a unification algorithm, so what do you all think of “x unified with y”?

I like “bound” too. Simple and understandable.

Here’s a another one to throw in the mix:

name, is the same as, José

From this video.

After watching that video, I am leaning towards just saying:

name, equals, José

And just being aware that the operator can be used to assign variables as well as other things/pattern match - because they all boil down to making both sides the same/equal.

I’m also leaning towards this because = is in fact the equals sign and calling it that just seems to make sense. (Can anyone remember when we first told to refer to the = sign as is set to - I distinctly remembering thinking that that’s weird, it doesn’t mean that it means equals! )

I think that it’s wrong question. I doubt you really translate in your mind = sign to a spoken word or phrase. I’m thinking in terms of symbols when I see symbols. Just like my native language being Polish, I don’t translate English text to Polish when I read it. And just as I read and think in English when dealing with English test, people etc. I think in “Programming” in general or “Elixir” in specific when I deal with Elixir code.

But If I was to read aloud this to someone I’d probably choose equals.

You are absolutely correct when it comes to the isolated character or symbol. But name = "José" puts that character in a context - and context can change everything.

Well, thinking a little bit more about it, maybe we, programmers, are just addicted to the verb “to set”. If we get back to our math classes, we would find ourselves describing x = 1 + 2 as “x equals to one plus two”.

EDITED

Yes, it conflicts with == but I guess the context should give “equals” the meaning in this cases. For example if (a == b), do: IO.puts("hi") would be described as “if a equals b prints ‘hi’” and we would totally understand.

And in the conflicting cases like x = (a == b) it could be described like “x equals the value of the boolean expression ‘a equals b’”.

I do if I am reading through code and the sign is a standard character (so not something like -> or ~>) I automatically read it as such.

I’m not really keen on referring to it as different things in different contexts tbh (particularly as it might confuse newbies).

I think acknowledging/explaining that it does different things in different contexts is probably fine, particularly since it more or less does the same thing; it makes equal or tries to make equal both sides. What do you think?

I don’t think there’s a conflict as that’s two together, which I think makes us more attuned and open to accepting that it means something different (similar or related perhaps, but different). Agree?