[TYPES] trace back pattern matching, typecase

[Jacques Carette]

Burak Emir wrote:
> 2) For typecase, it is much less clear to me what one could reference as 
> first emergence. Modula-3 comes to my mind. It is probably helpful to 
> narrow my query to statically typed languages at this point.
>   
As far as programming language idioms go, this was already used in 
FORMAC (1962).
http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/showlanguage.prx?exp=158&language=FORMAC

Certainly it was in heavy use in Macsyma (1967/68 - today).  Which 
probably implies that it was an idiom known to LISP programmers before that.

But perhaps you meant 'typecase' in a (mostly) statically typed 
language?  Then Scratchpad (now Axiom) probably had that from early on 
in its life (definitely by the early 80s, more likely before that).

Jacques