typhon

Yes, you have it exactly right, including the usage of non-local control flow to interrupt and restart the search. [0] is another implementation in an imperative language. [0] https://github.com/monte-language/typhon/blob/master/mast/fu...

The homoiconicity is important. Python and ECMAScript (don't use "JavaScript", it's a trademark of Oracle's) are not homoiconic. Consider this Monte translation of OP's blog post: https://github.com/monte-language/typhon/blob/master/mast/fu... The main feature present in Lisps and in Monte but not in Python nor ECMAScript is quasiquotation. ES has template literals, and Python 3 has f-strings, but neither language can use them for pattern-matching, only value-building.

We independently reinvented an adaptation of this algorithm for Monte's "simple" quasiliteral, which does simple string interpolation and matching. The code at https://github.com/monte-language/typhon/blob/master/mast/pr... is somewhat similar in appearance and structure to the examples in the post. def name := "Hackernews" # greeting == "Hi Hackernews!" def greeting := `Hi $name!` # language == "Lojban" def `@language is awesome` := "Lojban is awesome" A quirk of our presentation is that adjacent zero-or-more patterns degenerate, with each subsequent pattern matching the empty string. This mirrors the observation in the post that some systems can coalesce adjacent stars without changing the semantics: # one == "", two == "cool" def `adjacent @one@two patterns` := "adjacent cool patterns"