Slice patterns

If you want to match against a slice or array, you can use & with the slice_patterns feature:

#![feature(slice_patterns)]

fn main() {
    let v = vec!["match_this", "1"];

    match &v[..] {
        &["match_this", second] => println!("The second element is {}", second),
        _ => {},
    }
}

The advanced_slice_patterns gate lets you use .. to indicate any number of elements inside a pattern matching a slice. This wildcard can only be used once for a given array. If there's an identifier before the .., the result of the slice will be bound to that name. For example:

#![feature(advanced_slice_patterns, slice_patterns)]

fn is_symmetric(list: &[u32]) -> bool {
    match list {
        &[] | &[_] => true,
        &[x, ref inside.., y] if x == y => is_symmetric(inside),
        _ => false
    }
}

fn main() {
    let sym = &[0, 1, 4, 2, 4, 1, 0];
    assert!(is_symmetric(sym));

    let not_sym = &[0, 1, 7, 2, 4, 1, 0];
    assert!(!is_symmetric(not_sym));
}