[plt-scheme] Does anyone use `set!' and `get!' patterns?

Chongkai Zhu <czhu at cs.utah.edu> writes:

> Joe Wells wrote:
>> "Sam TH" <samth at ccs.neu.edu> writes:
>> 
>>> Currently, "plt-match.ss" and scheme/match (in v4) provide `set!' and
>>> `get!' patterns, which bind mutators and accessors for the matched
>>> locations, respectively. While these look clever, they complicated the
>>> implementation of match, and don't seem to be used.  In particular,
>>> I've searched the entire collections hierarchy, and they don't seem to
>>> be used at all.  Given this, I'd like to remove the implementations.
>>> Does anyone else use them in their code, or have any reason that they
>>> would want to?
>>
>> ML has this feature in pattern matching (in SML a pattern like “ref x”
>> dereferences a mutable cell and binds its current contents to x).  So
>> presumably PLT can claim to implement a superset of ML pattern
>> matching.  Without this feature, ML fanboys could say “but you don't
>> have mutator patterns, so our language is better, ha ha ha”.
>
> Sorry, but I don't think what you said is true. PLT-match is a
> superset of ML pattern matching, even with out set! and get!
> pattern.

That's cool.  So why the set!/get! patterns?  What do they do?

-- 
Joe