Why use MLStyle.jl?

Straightforward

Pattern matching is convenient.

Algebraic data types are convenient.

Extensible pattern matching is convenient.

Generalised Algebraic data types are convenient.

Performance Gain

When dealing with conditional logics or visiting nested data, the codes compiled via MLStyle.jl is usually faster than the handwritten code. You can check the benchmark results in the home page for details.

Extensibility

You can define your own patterns via the interfaces:

• pattern_uncall(::Type{P}, self, type_params, type_args, args)

• pattern_unref(::Type{P}, self, args)

Check documentations for details.

Referential Transparency

You can use MLStyle only in development time by expanding the macros.

MLStyle generates enclosed codes which require no runtime support, which means the generated code can run without MLStyle installed.

Also, MLStyle is implemented by itself now, via the bootstrap method.

Intuition of AST Manipulations

MLStyle.jl gives you a chance to validate or extract things from Julia ASTs(Symbol, Expr, etc.) in an intuitive way, that is, a syntactic way:

Suppose you construct an AST with code ex = :($f(a, b)), here you insert f into the AST.

You can then just extract what you insert into AST with the same syntax:

f = some_thing
ex = :($f(a, b))

f == @match ex begin
    :($f(a, b)) => f
end # => true

Note, MLStyle.jl is not a superset of MacroTools.jl, though it provides something useful for AST manipulations. Besides, in terms of extracting sub-structures from a given AST, you get an orders of magnitude speed up against using MacroTools.jl.

(TODO)