Pattern Matching

By Kaz Zhou, September 2020. Revised May 2021

Patterns take on many appearances, such as:

• Constants: 150
• Variables: x
• Wildcard: _
• Tuples: (true, _)
• Constructors (which may contain other patterns):
• Lists: x::xs
• Other datatypes: Node(L,x,R)

Patterns can be matched against values to form bindings. Consider the following declaration:

val (x,y) = (1,2)

The result is that 1 gets bound to x, and 2 gets bound to y.

Pattern matching may fail. For example, the following raises exception Bind.

val 10 = 9

Besides val declarations, pattern matching is also used in function declarations, lambda expressions, and case expressions.

Function declarations:

fun fact 0 = 1
| fact n = n * fact(n-1)


The function fact is given an int as input. If the input successfully matches the pattern 0, then the function returns 1. Otherwise, the input is matched with the pattern n, binding the input to n. For example, if we evaluate fact 5, then 5 is bound to n, so the expression becomes 5 * fact(4).

Each clause of the function declaration tells fact what it should do, depending on the input. The bar, |, acts as a separator between the two clauses.

Note that it's important for your patterns to be exhaustive. The above function is fine, because all values of type int can match with either 0 or n. However, suppose we had the following function:

fun fiction 1 = 1
| fiction 2 = 2
| fiction 3 = 6


There are many inputs which do not match with either 1, 2, or 3. For example, fiction 4 would raise exception Match.

A more subtle bug is when patterns are redundant. The following example has the clauses of fact swapped.

fun factloop n = n * factloop(n-1)
| factloop 0 = 1


The second clause of factloop never gets executed! When evaluating factloop 0, SML will try to match 0 to each pattern, in order. Therefore, factloop 0 steps to 0 * factloop(-1), because 0 can match to n. Convince yourself that factloop k will loop forever for any k of type int!

Lambda expressions:

(fn [] => false | x::xs => true) [1,2,3]

The lambda expression is similar to a function, as it turns an input into an output. In the example above, [1,2,3] is the input. It doesn't match with [], but it does match with x::xs. Namely, 1 gets bound to x, and the list [2,3] gets bound to xs. As a result of this successful pattern matching, the lambda expression returns true.

You should still make sure your patterns are exhaustive. For example, the following expression raises exception Match:

(fn [] => false) [1,2,3]

Case expressions:

fun fact' x =
case x of
0 => 1
| n => n * fact' (n-1)


First, note that fact' does the same thing as fact. However, it uses an extra case expression.

Let's consider what happens when we evaluate fact' 5. First, 5 gets bound to x. Then, the case expression tries to match 5 to a pattern. In this scenario, 5 successfully pattern matches with n, so 5 gets bound to n. Therefore, fact' 5 evaluates to 5 * fact' 4.

As usual, the patterns in case expressions should be exhaustive.