On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 2:10 PM MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:

I think that's done for consistency. '_' is a wildcard and you can have:

case (_, _):

to match any 2-tuple, so:

case _:

would match any value, and can thus already serve as the default.

I wouldn't object to 'else', though.

Can you have case (x,x): ? I haven't tried the implementation, but it's not addressed in the PEP that I see, and if that's legal, then _ is effectively just a style choice, rather than a functional one, and there's no reason it shouldn't also be a named match.

+1 for including "else:" for consistency even if that's just a shim for "case _:"