Timon Gehr:
Switch is syntax sugar for jump tables. An adequate pattern matching construct would not require explicit control flow statements, and it would be an expression of arbitrary type.
Introducing a good pattern matching syntax in D requires the introduction of a good amount of complexity. This idea was discussed few times in past.
D switches also work on strings, wstrings, dstrings, so the idea of extending them to work on small array is not too much different.
I think that switching on structs, and tuples with auto-assignment of variables for tuple fields, is enough to extend the usefulness of D switches significantly, while it introduces no new keywords, and not a lot of complexity for both the compiler and the programmer that has to learn D language.
Bye, bearophile
