[racket-dev] The `var` pattern in `match`

On 11/29/12 1:45 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 10:40 AM, David Van Horn <dvanhorn at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> On 11/29/12 7:31 AM, Carl Eastlund wrote:
>>>
>>> Having something like the "var" pattern can be useful for macros that
>>> expand into uses of match, if the macro doesn't want to expose that a
>>> bound variable will be a match pattern and therefore must not be "_" or
>>> "...".  Granted, there are ways around this, but personally I think it
>>> would be nice if match supported this pattern.  I would, however,
>>> entirely support renaming this pattern to something more obscure, like
>>> "match:pattern-variable" or something, so that unintentional uses stop
>>> being a problem.
>>
>>
>> I think the real solution is to have (whatever name you give) `var' be
>> something that is matched as an identifier and not a literal so that
>> programmers can rename the pattern.  But I know from talking with Sam this
>> would be a big change for match.
>
> Making `var` specifically be matched by binding would be possible --
> it would be less of a change than removing it entirely.

I would still like the default to be something other than `var'.

(BTW, it looks like `var' is not an indexed term in the docs for match.)

David