How does the Erlang compiler implement pattern matching?

Question

I am wondering how pattern matching is usually implemented. for example in Erlang do you think its implemented at the byte-code level( there's a byte-code for it so that its done efficiently) or is it generated as a series of instructions (series of byte-codes) by the compiler?

It is such a useful thing that I just have to put it into a toy language I am building.

Answer 1

You can see what happen if compile some code

-module(match).
-export([match/1]).
match(X) -> {a,Y} = X.

When you want see how looks like core

> c(match, to_core).

or

$ erlc +to_core match.erl

result is

module 'match' ['match'/1,
                'module_info'/0,
                'module_info'/1]
    attributes []
'match'/1 =
    %% Line 3
    fun (_cor0) ->
        case _cor0 of
          <{'a',Y}> when 'true' ->
              _cor0
          ( <_cor1> when 'true' ->
                primop 'match_fail'
                    ({'badmatch',_cor1})
            -| ['compiler_generated'] )
        end
'module_info'/0 =
    fun () ->
        call 'erlang':'get_module_info'
            ('match')
'module_info'/1 =
    fun (_cor0) ->
        call 'erlang':'get_module_info'
            ('match', _cor0)

If you want see asm code of beam you can do

> c(match, 'S').

or

$ erlc -S match.erl

and result

{module, match}.  %% version = 0

{exports, [{match,1},{module_info,0},{module_info,1}]}.

{attributes, []}.

{labels, 8}.


{function, match, 1, 2}.
  {label,1}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,match},1}.
  {label,2}.
    {test,is_tuple,{f,3},[{x,0}]}.
    {test,test_arity,{f,3},[{x,0},2]}.
    {get_tuple_element,{x,0},0,{x,1}}.
    {test,is_eq_exact,{f,3},[{x,1},{atom,a}]}.
    return.
  {label,3}.
    {badmatch,{x,0}}.


{function, module_info, 0, 5}.
  {label,4}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,module_info},0}.
  {label,5}.
    {move,{atom,match},{x,0}}.
    {call_ext_only,1,{extfunc,erlang,get_module_info,1}}.


{function, module_info, 1, 7}.
  {label,6}.
    {func_info,{atom,match},{atom,module_info},1}.
  {label,7}.
    {move,{x,0},{x,1}}.
    {move,{atom,match},{x,0}}.
    {call_ext_only,2,{extfunc,erlang,get_module_info,2}}.

As you can see {test,is_tuple,..., {test,test_arity,..., {get_tuple_element,... and {test,is_eq_exact,... are instruction how this match is performed in beam and it's transformed directly to byte-code of beam.

Erlang compiler is implemented in Erlang itself and you can look at each phase of compilation in source code of compile module and details in depend modules.