[Haskell-cafe] Why isn't pattern matching lazy by default?

[Miguel Mitrofanov]

>> Now why isn't pattern matching lazy by default?  This seems odd  
>> for a newbie since everything else is lazy by default.
>
> It's even more confusing that pattern matching in 'let' _is_ lazy.

No, it's not.

See, in let or where constructs you don't have a choice; you can't do  
different things depending on whether some value is Just x or  
Nothing. Therefore, there is no need to perform pattern matching  
strictly.