Getting Clojure

Going Further

Destructuring is one of those convenience features that always seems to leave you wanting more. For instance, consider that when destructuring a map with keyword keys, people tend to use symbols that look just like the keys. If, for example, we were working with maps that looked like this:

{:name "Romeo" :age 16 :gender :male}

we might be inclined to bind the value of :name to name, :age to age, and :gender to gender:

(defn character-desc [{name :name age :age gender :gender}]
  (str "Name: " name " age: " age " gender: " gender))

This does work, but there’s a lot of repetition in the code as we repeat our way through name :name age :age gender :gender. If only we could just say, Oh, and pull out :name, :age, and