at sign - What does '@' mean in Haskell?

Question

I've tried googling but come up short. I am furthering my Haskell knowledge by reading some articles and I came across one that uses a syntax I've never seen before. An example would be:

reconstruct node@(Node a b c l r) parent@(Node b d le ri)

I've never seen these @'s before. I tried searching online for an answer but came up short. Is this simply a way to embed tags to help make things clearer, or do they have an actual impact on the code?

Answer 1

It is used in pattern matching. Now node variable will refer to the entire Node data type for the argument Node a b c l r. So instead of passing to the function as Node a b c l r, you can use node instead to pass it up.

A much simpler example to demonstrate it:

data SomeType = Leaf Int Int Int | Nil deriving Show

someFunction :: SomeType -> SomeType
someFunction leaf@(Leaf _ _ _) = leaf
someFunction Nil = Leaf 0 0 0

The someFunction can also be written as:

someFunction :: SomeType -> SomeType
someFunction (Leaf x y z) = Leaf x y z
someFunction Nil = Leaf 0 0 0

See how simpler was the first version ?