The match statement is a convenient shortcut for cases where a case statement would be used to match a value, and give back a result. While it may resemble pattern matching operators in some other languages it is not fully equivalent, as Golo does not support destructuring.

match is a great addition to the Golo programmer:

let item = "foo@bar.com"

let what_it_could_be = -> match {
  when item: contains("@") then "an email?"
  when item: startsWith("+33") then "a French phone number?"
  when item: startsWith("http://") then "a website URL?"
  otherwise "I have no clue, mate!"
}

# prints "an email?"
println(what_it_could_be(item))

The values to be returned are specified after a then keyword that follows a boolean expression to be evaluated.

Like case statements, a match construct needs at least one when clause and one otherwise clause.