like

A pragmatic approach to type information in Clojure

Dynamic typing is nice, but sometimes I would like to have more type information when the data is complex, or I have not looked at the function for a while. Wouldn't it be nice to have verifiable documention of what data a function needs, and how the result of the function looks like?

This small little function makes code easier to reason about for me. It's called like. It checks the shape of things.

(like [] [1 :keyword '()]) => true

(like [1] [1 2 3]) => true

(like [:keyword] [1 2 3]) => false

(like [{:name "joe" :address ""}] [{:name "me" :address "here"} {:name "you" :address "there"}]) => true

(like {:name "joe" :address ""} {:name "me"}) => false

(like #{1} [1]) => false

You can use it as pre- or postcondition, so the similarity of in/output is succinctly documented and checked automatically. And you do not have to use it everywhere, only where you feel it helps you understand the code better.

(fn parse-int [str] ...)

needs no type or unit-test to be understood.

(fn parse-appointment [str] ...)

is better understood when it has

{:post [(like {:id (UUID.) :name "me" :date (java.util.Date .)} %)]}