Python 3 - Second Edition

25.2    Pattern Types in the case Statement

The structural pattern matching of Python provides wide-ranging options to define patterns. We’ll highlight several of these in this section.

25.2.1    Literal and Value Patterns

The simplest case of a pattern is to explicitly write the matching value as a literal, as we did in the introductory example for strings. The following literals are allowed:

• String literals

• Literals for signed and unsigned numbers

• None, True, and False

In addition, it’s possible not to specify values explicitly by their literal, but to use a reference to the desired value instead. To avoid ambiguities with the capture patterns we’ll describe later (Section 25.2.6), there is a restriction here that references must be ...