Subject: bug#48315: (ice-9 match) does not suport #nil

From: Taylan Kammer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 22:03:57 +0200

This was mind-boggling to debug!

In syntax-rules, the pattern (x ...) will match #nil, since it
matches the empty list.  This can have surprising consequences.

Consider:

  (define-syntax test
    (syntax-rules ()
      ((test (x ...))
       (x ...))
      ((test x)
       x)))

  (test (+ 1 2))  ; => 3
  (test 123)      ; => 123
  (test #f)       ; => #f
  ;; However...
  (test #nil)     ; error

Anyway, attached is a patch to fix the issue in match.

- Taylan
From b6d0b715a8bf0cc39b9fc3d46efeaf010f0d4351 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Taylan Kammer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 21:46:54 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix match when used directly on the #nil constant.

* module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm (match): Make sure we don't match #nil
where we don't intend to.

Fixes <https://bugs.gnu.org/48315>.
---
 module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm | 9 ++++++---
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm b/module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm
index b1fc371b8..3b181b75b 100644
--- a/module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm
+++ b/module/ice-9/match.upstream.scm
@@ -269,9 +269,12 @@
      (match-syntax-error "missing match expression"))
     ((match atom)
      (match-syntax-error "no match clauses"))
-    ((match (app ...) (pat . body) ...)
-     (let ((v (app ...)))
-       (match-next v ((app ...) (set! (app ...))) (pat . body) ...)))
+    ;; The original implementation uses (app ...) not (op arg ...) here,
+    ;; but in Guile this would match #nil when it shouldn't.  Failing to
+    ;; match () doesn't matter since it leads to an error anyway.
+    ((match (op arg ...) (pat . body) ...)
+     (let ((v (op arg ...)))
+       (match-next v ((op arg ...) (set! (op arg ...))) (pat . body) ...)))
     ((match #(vec ...) (pat . body) ...)
      (let ((v #(vec ...)))
        (match-next v (v (set! v)) (pat . body) ...)))
-- 
2.30.2