Fun to see. When I worked on the implementation of Rod Burstall’s HOPE language (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800087.802799 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.

Fun to see. When I worked on the implementation of Rod Burstall’s HOPE language (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800087.802799 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800087.802799) in 1979 I “invented” pattern compilation and implemented it (in POP-2) for the HOPE interpreter. HOPE patterns were of course way simpler than Haskell patterns, so my algorithm was pretty straightforward. From the math point of view, any function or arity n that has a parameter whose possible actual values belong to a finite discrete set can be replaced by a family of functions of arity n-1.