AstonJ

AstonJ

Do you say 'unpack' or 'destructure'?

Consider this Erlang code:

Rectangle = {rectangle, 20, 10}.
{rectangle, Width, Height} = Rectangle.
> Width.
20
> Height.
10

When I was watching an Elixir video the person kept calling this ‘destructuring’ (which I think is what they say in the JS world?) but Joe Armstrong, in his book Programming Erlang, calls this ‘unpacking’ - so I am curious, how do you refer to it when using a BEAM language?

  • Unpack
  • Destructure
  • Use the terms interchangeably depending on the language
  • Something else - please say in thread!

0 voters

Most Liked

chriseyre2000

chriseyre2000

Technically it’s pattern matching since we can be more specific by repeating a variable to ensure that it is used in multiple places.

Eiji

Eiji

Object : typeof instance === "object". Special non-data but Structural type for any constructed object instance also used as data structures: new Object, new Array, new Map, new Set, new WeakMap, new WeakSet, new Date and almost everything made with new keyword;

Source: JavaScript data types and data structures - JavaScript | MDN

This quote shows us that equivalent/similar data types across languages are implemented and therefore grouped differently which means that we can’t use exactly same naming. Different naming forces new developer to think: Why it's named like that? and that ends up with looking for it’s definition.

The destructuring assignment syntax is a JavaScript expression that makes it possible to unpack values from arrays, or properties from objects, into distinct variables.

Source: Destructuring assignment - JavaScript | MDN

Having in mind that both destructure and unpack are used only for arrays and objects it’s confusing to use them in Elixir for other data types like for example string. Destructure naming could also be confusing for newbies as we have structs.

Destructure and unpack antonyms suggest that we have something structured or packed which is not always true. While it’s common to say that we are unpacking bits from string still we can’t say that we are unpacking something from literal like for example: 5 = variable.

Generally i.e. for all data types I prefer to think about some connection of assignment, fetch, pattern and take words (which are most common) like taking by pattern or something like that.

@AstonJ Considering your Erlang code we can say that we are taking items: rectangle, Width and Height by 3-element tuple pattern of Rectangle variable. What do you think about it?

Where Next?

Popular Backend topics Top

AstonJ
Which server-side languages are you most interested in right now? Anything new or relatively new that’s caught your eye? Maybe an older l...
New
bot
Add sound to your Python game. This is part 13 in an ongoing series about creating video games in Python 3 using the Pygame module. Prev...
New
New
finner
Just wondering how many devs out there are using Spring Reactive, specifically WebFlux?
New
finner
During a recent code review I came across this scenario: Code in review if (input.getValue() != null) { return Arrays.asList(value);...
New
New
First poster: bot
Rust 2021 Roadmap by Mark-Simulacrum · Pull Request #3037 · rust-lang/rfcs. The focus of this year is on project health, specifically as...
New
Cellane
Phoenix 1.6.0 got released last week, with built-in authentication and mailer generators, a whole new HEEx (HTML-aware Embedded Elixir) e...
New
jaeyson
Hey! Just a random thought though: Found an article from fudzilla where AI can be a good debugger. How does one integrate something like ...
New
pillaiindu
Hi everyone, Does anyone know when will “Agile Web Development in Rails 8” by Pragmatic Bookshelf release. I’m eager to dive into the la...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
New
AstonJ
Biggest jackpot ever apparently! :upside_down_face: I don’t (usually) gamble/play the lottery, but working on a program to predict the...
New
foxtrottwist
A few weeks ago I started using Warp a terminal written in rust. Though in it’s current state of development there are a few caveats (tab...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build efficient applications that exploit the unique benefits of a pure functional language, learning from an engineer who uses Haskell t...
New
AstonJ
Was just curious to see if any were around, found this one: I got 51/100: Not sure if it was meant to buy I am sure at times the b...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Jamis Buck @jamis This month, we have the pleasure of spotlighting author Jamis Buck, who has written Mazes for Prog...
New
AstonJ
If you’re getting errors like this: psql: error: connection to server on socket “/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432” failed: No such file or directory ...
New
AstonJ
This is cool! DEEPSEEK-V3 ON M4 MAC: BLAZING FAST INFERENCE ON APPLE SILICON We just witnessed something incredible: the largest open-s...
New
AstonJ
This is a very quick guide, you just need to: Download LM Studio: https://lmstudio.ai/ Click on search Type DeepSeek, then select the o...
New
Fl4m3Ph03n1x
Background Lately I am in a quest to find a good quality TTS ai generation tool to run locally in order to create audio for some videos I...
New