F# has a special type of pattern matching called “active patterns” where the pattern can be parsed or detected dynamically. As with normal patterns, the matching and output are combined into a single step from the caller’s point of view.
Here is an example of using active patterns to parse a string into an int or bool.
// create an active pattern let (|Int|_|) str = match System.Int32.TryParse(str) with | (true,int) -> Some(int) | _ -> None // create an active pattern let (|Bool|_|) str = match System.Boolean.TryParse(str) with | (true,bool) -> Some(bool) | _ -> None
Once these patterns have been set up, they can be used as part of a normal “
// create a function to call the patterns let testParse str = match str with | Int i -> printfn "The value is an int '%i'" i | Bool b -> printfn "The value is a bool '%b'" b | _ -> printfn "The value '%s' is something else" str // test testParse "12" testParse "true" testParse "abc"
You can see that from the caller’s point of view, the matching with an
Bool is transparent, even though there is parsing going on behind the scenes.
A similar example is to use active patterns with regular expressions in order to both match on a regex pattern and return the matched value in a single step.
// create an active pattern open System.Text.RegularExpressions let (|FirstRegexGroup|_|) pattern input = let m = Regex.Match(input,pattern) if (m.Success) then Some m.Groups..Value else None
Again, once this pattern has been set up, it can be used transparently as part of a normal match expression.
// create a function to call the pattern let testRegex str = match str with | FirstRegexGroup "http://(.*?)/(.*)" host -> printfn "The value is a url and the host is %s" host | FirstRegexGroup ".*?@(.*)" host -> printfn "The value is an email and the host is %s" host | _ -> printfn "The value '%s' is something else" str // test testRegex "http://google.com/test" testRegex "firstname.lastname@example.org"
And for fun, here’s one more: the well-known FizzBuzz challenge written using active patterns.
// setup the active patterns let (|MultOf3|_|) i = if i % 3 = 0 then Some MultOf3 else None let (|MultOf5|_|) i = if i % 5 = 0 then Some MultOf5 else None // the main function let fizzBuzz i = match i with | MultOf3 & MultOf5 -> printf "FizzBuzz, " | MultOf3 -> printf "Fizz, " | MultOf5 -> printf "Buzz, " | _ -> printf "%i, " i // test [1..20] |> List.iter fizzBuzz