A language in which matching on a structure is not a statement but instead returns a value; the special case of matching on a boolean (this is often spelled `if

A language in which matching on a structure is not a statement but instead returns a value; the special case of matching on a boolean (this is often spelled `if`); one which doesn't have a `throw` statement (but instead models it as a generic function `Exception -> 'a`, for example); etc. The `if` statement is just less ergonomic than the ternary operator, because statements don't compose as well as expressions do. A language which has a lazy ternary operator, and which lets you use an expression of type `unit` as a statement, does not require an `if` statement at all, because `if a then (b : unit) else (c : unit)` is identically `a ? b : c`. The converse is not true: you can't use `if` statements to mimic the ternary operator without explicitly setting up some state to mutate.