In Defense of Match-case Statements in Python
I recently came across Khuyen Tran's post on ๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐๐ก-๐๐๐ฌ๐ in Python. In a gist, starting Python 3.10, you can use ๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐๐ก-๐๐๐ฌ๐ statements to mimic the behavior of ๐ข๐-๐๐ฅ๐ฌ๐.
Many responses on that post suggested that ๐ข๐-๐๐ฅ๐ฌ๐ offers higher elegance and readability. Here's an example in defense of ๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐๐ก-๐๐๐ฌ๐.
While if-else is traditionally accepted, it also comes with many downsides. For instance, many-a-times, one has to write complex chains of nested if-else statements. This includes multiple calls to ๐ฅ๐๐ง(), ๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ง๐๐() methods, etc.
Furthermore, with ๐ข๐-๐๐ฅ๐ฌ๐, one has to explicitly destructure the data to extract values. This makes your code inelegant and messy.
Match-case, on the other hand, offers Structural Pattern Matching which makes this simple and concise. In the example above, match-case automatically handles type-matching, length check, and variable unpacking.
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