Home Matching Objects With Patterns Matching Objects With Patterns. Burak Emir, Martin Odersky, and John Williams. Data in object-oriented programming is organized in a hierarchy of classes. The problem of object-oriented pattern matching is how to explore this hierarchy from the outside. This usually involves classifying objects by their run-time type, accessing their members, or determining some other characteristic of a group of objects. In this paper we compare six different pattern matching techniques: object-oriented decomposition, visitors, type-tests/typecasts, typecase, case classes, and extractors. The techniques are compared on nine criteria related to conciseness, maintainability and performance. The paper introduces case classes and extractors as two new pattern-matching methods and shows that their combination works well for all of the established criteria. Comment viewing options Flat list - collapsed Flat list - expanded Threaded list - collapsed Threaded list - expanded Date - newest first Date - oldest first Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.