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I invite you to think about how such a thing might be implemented, and what arrays are for, and the question sort of answers itself.
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<div>The built-in patterns are about unpacking: recovering type information, unpacking records into their components, unpacking arrays into their contents. Asking whether an array contains exactly these elements, or even asking that question about a prefix
of the elements, is an unpacking. Searching an array, as would be required by a wild card in the beginning or middle, is valid things to want to do, but it’s not unpacking. (And the cost model would be deceptive.)</div>
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<div>Arrays are a low level, built-in feature of the language, not a database to be queried. <br>
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<div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPad</div>
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<blockquote type="cite">On Feb 3, 2026, at 1:01 AM, David Alayachew <davidalayachew@gmail.com> wrote:<br>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">Hello <a class="gmail_plusreply" id="plusReplyChip-1" href="mailto:amber-dev@openjdk.org" tabindex="-1">@amber-dev</a>,</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">I was a little surprised that I didn't notice this until now, but when re-reading Brian's <a href="https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/amber-spec-observers/2022-September/003635.html">Array Patterns write-up</a>,
I realized that my brain auto-completed something that wasn't actually there.</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">In the write-up, there is only the concept of a prefix match or an exact match. But what about a suffix match? Or a "somewhere-in-the-center" match?</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">The original proposal for Array Patterns (that preceded this one) had the "..." syntax, which I mentally auto-completed to be "0 or more elements". Maybe that was a mistake on my part too.</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">Anyways, could I get some clarification? Is that intentionally unspecified for now, pending further thought? Or is that something that will be handled else where?</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">And by all means, what is there, I like. It's just that the message calls itself Array Patterns, so my thought is that it would cover all the possible types of matches one might want to do on an array.</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">Thank you for your time and help.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace">David Alayachew</div>
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