# 4 major problems of pattern matching in Julia

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/4-major-problems-of-pattern-matching-in-julia/34392>\
**Category:** Community\
**Tags:** pattern-matching\
**Created:** [February 10, 2020, 1:02am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/4-major-problems-of-pattern-matching-in-julia/34392 "2020-02-10T01:02:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 8:03am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/4-major-problems-of-pattern-matching-in-julia/34392/2 "2020-02-10T08:03:07Z")

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I am somewhat surprised about the great selection of pattern matching libraries in Julia. The fact that there are so many suggests that people find pattern matching in Julia useful.

I feel like I am missing something because I don’t (except when I work with ASTs, for which [MacroTools.jl](https://github.com/MikeInnes/MacroTools.jl) is perfect). I am not opposed to the idea in general: eg in Haskell, I recognize that it is an indispensable idiom.

It’s just that in Julia, I find that parametric multiple dispatch (with the [common idioms)](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/methods/#Design-Patterns-with-Parametric-Methods-1) is powerful enough for my needs. Whenever I need something resembling pattern matching, I factor out the relevant code to a small kernel function.

This is not meant to be a criticism of programming styles that use pattern matching, I am just wondering what I am missing.

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