Python Morsels: Appreciating Python's match-case by parsing Python code

Table of contents

1. Why remove dataclasses?
2. Oh, that's what that tool is for?
3. Using "or patterns" to match multiple sub-patterns
4. Conditional patterns with guard clauses
5. Structural pattern matching visually describes the structure of objects
6. When writing parsers and matchers, consider match-case

Why remove dataclasses?

First let's briefly talk about why I made this tool.

Why would anyone want to convert a dataclass into "not a dataclass"?

There are trade offs with using dataclasses: performance concerns (which don't usually matter) and edge cases where things get weird (__slots__ and slots=True are both finicky). But my reason for creating this dataclass to regular class converter was to help me better teach dataclasses. Seeing the equivalent code for a dataclass helps us appreciate what dataclasses do for us.

Okay let's dive into match-case.

Oh, that's what that tool is for?

I knew the adventure I …