Working with Multiple Patterns¶
Mathics allows Functions to have the same name but different function
signatures. For example maybe you can call Hello
with a either
one or two parameters.
Mathics calls the a signature a “Form”.
One way to implement this in Python code is to have two different
Python methods that start with the name apply
, one will
handle one kind of Form, say of the kind we saw previously,
a person name is given. The other apply method will handle
another kind of Form, such as one where there is an
additional parameter, a string language value.
Here is some code for this..
from mathics.builtin.base import Builtin, String
class Hello(Builtin):
def apply(self, person: String, language: String, evaluation) -> String:
"""Hello[person_String, language_String]"""
greeting = "Bonjour" if language.get_string_value() == "French" else "Hello"
return String(f"{greeting}, {person.get_string_value()}!")
def apply_english(self, person: String, evaluation) -> String:
"""Hello[person_]"""
return self.apply(person, Expression("English"), evaluation)
Here is a session showing how this works:
$ mathics
In[1]:= Hello["Rocky"]
Out[1]= Hello, Rocky!
In[2]:= Hello["Rocky", "French"]
Out[2]= Bonjour, Rocky!
In[3]:= Hello["Rocky", "English"]
Out[3]= Hello, Rocky!
In[4]:= Hello[45]
Out[4]= Hello[45]
In[5]:= Hello["Rocky", "French" , c]
Out[5]= Hello["Rocky", French, c]
As shown above, in order to evaluate a function call, Mathics pattern matches on the inputs.
If the inputs don’t match any of the patterns of the existing
definitions then the entire expression is returned unchanged. This is
seen in In[4]
; 45 doesn’t match the String
type check part of
person_String
; 45 is not a string, so Hello[45]
is returned.
Similarly in In[5]
three parameters are given rather than one or two.
If a function does not return any value, the Mathics expression is
left unchanged. Note that you have to explicitly return
Symbol["Null"]
(which we have a defined for you in SymbolNull
)
if you want that to return Null.