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

[lrosa007]

___ is bound to ___

[IRLeif]

@AstonJ

When you see code like this:

name = "José"

How do you read it in your mind?

In my mind, it reads something like this:

“I am making the assertion that the variable name is bound to the value "José". If the variable name is not bound to any value, then name will get bound the value "José" and my assertion will be true. If name is bound to any value other than "José", then my assertion will be false.”

[grych]

@IRLeif

If name is bound to any value other than "José" , then my assertion will be false.

Actually, it is not true. name will be re-bound.

name = "any other value"
name = "José"

[IRLeif]

@grych

Actually, it is not true. name will be re-bound.

name = "any other value"
name = "José"

Oh, yes! You’re right. My brain relapsed to “Erlang-mode” when writing that

Which is funny, because I just started a thread about this exact topic:

First encounter with variable rebinding in pattern matching

As I’m currently in the early stages of learning Elixir, having learned Erlang first, I’m encountering some curiosities and confusions. I thought I’d share them. Here is the first such topic. This is explained in more detail on pages 15-19 in Programming Elixir. In Elixir, we can do this: Interactive Elixir (1.6.5) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help) iex(1)> a = 1 1 iex(2)> a = 2 2 If we try the same thing in Erlang, this happens: Eshell V8.3 (abort with ^G) 1> A = 1. 1 2> A =…

[dbern]

I say name is matched and assigned to “José”. Because if it’s not an existing variable, it’s assigned.

It makes more sense to me when pattern matching.

{:ok, name} = {:ok, "Jose"}