Pattern matching - implementation

Question

I am wondering how pattern matching is usually implemented. for example in Erlang do you think its implemented at the byte-code level( there\'s a byte-code for it so that it

Answer 1

A very good description of compiling pattern matching is given in "The implementation of functional programming languages" by Simon Peyton Jones. It is a bit old but a very good book. It also contains, amongst other things, a description of compiling list comprehensions.

The Erlang compiler uses both of these algorithms from the book.

Answer 2

If you want to build your own pattern matcher there is a paper by Scott and Ramsey and a paper by Luc Maranget which both describe how to compile patterns to efficient decision trees (aka nested switch statements).

Answer 3

The best thing I can suggest is to compile up some test functions and have a look at the generated code.

erlc -S test.erl

generates test.S which is fairly readable.

To answer the question, pattern matches are built up in an efficient way from more primitive operations. Here's part of the code from a function clause matching {X, [H|T]}.

{test,is_tuple,{f,1},[{x,0}]}.
{test,test_arity,{f,1},[{x,0},2]}.
{get_tuple_element,{x,0},0,{x,1}}.
{get_tuple_element,{x,0},1,{x,2}}.
{test,is_nonempty_list,{f,4},[{x,2}]}.

Answer 4

You can see what happen if compile some code

-module(match).
-export([match/1]).
match(X) -> {a,Y} = X.

When you want see how looks like core

> c(match, to_core).

or

$ erlc +to_core match.erl

result is

module 'match' ['match'/1,
                'module_info'/0,
                'module_info'/1]
    attributes []
'match'/1 =
    %% Line 3
    fun (_cor0) ->
        case _cor0 of
          <{'a',Y}> when 'true' ->
              _cor0
          ( <_cor1> when 'true' ->
                primop 'match_fail'
                    ({'badmatch',_cor1})
            -| ['compiler_generated'] )
        end
'module_info'/0 =
    fun () ->
        call 'erlang':'get_module_info'
            ('match')
'module_info'/1 =
    fun (_cor0) ->
        call 'erlang':'get_module_info'
            ('match', _cor0)

If you want see asm code of beam you can do

> c(match, 'S').

or

$ erlc -S match.erl

and result

{module, match}.  %% version = 0

{exports, [{match,1},{module_info,0},{module_info,1}]}.

{attributes, []}.

{labels, 8}.


{function, match, 1, 2}.
  {label,1}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,match},1}.
  {label,2}.
    {test,is_tuple,{f,3},[{x,0}]}.
    {test,test_arity,{f,3},[{x,0},2]}.
    {get_tuple_element,{x,0},0,{x,1}}.
    {test,is_eq_exact,{f,3},[{x,1},{atom,a}]}.
    return.
  {label,3}.
    {badmatch,{x,0}}.


{function, module_info, 0, 5}.
  {label,4}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,module_info},0}.
  {label,5}.
    {move,{atom,match},{x,0}}.
    {call_ext_only,1,{extfunc,erlang,get_module_info,1}}.


{function, module_info, 1, 7}.
  {label,6}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,module_info},1}.
  {label,7}.
    {move,{x,0},{x,1}}.
    {move,{atom,match},{x,0}}.
    {call_ext_only,2,{extfunc,erlang,get_module_info,2}}.

As you can see {test,is_tuple,..., {test,test_arity,..., {get_tuple_element,... and {test,is_eq_exact,... are instruction how this match is performed in beam and it's transformed directly to byte-code of beam.

Erlang compiler is implemented in Erlang itself and you can look at each phase of compilation in source code of compile module and details in depend modules.