for many of the Erlang exercises the parameters they list for the function are uppercase (Erlang requirement) and preceded with an underscore like
score(_X, _Y) -> undefined.
what’s up with the underscore?
It makes compiler warnings about unused variables go away.
If you had score(X, Y) -> undefined, you would see warning about X and Y being unused.
Due to the fact that all the rebar-projects are warnings_as_errors this would be annoying, so we prefixed all the variables with an underscore to signal, it is fine for them to not be used.
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Thank you so much for the quick reply!
One more thing. What do you mean by rebar-projects?
Rebar is a buildtool for Erlang, and all exercises are delivered with a project file that describes the build.
If you do the exercises locally, might notice that you use rebar eunit or rebar3 eunit to run the tests.
The website works a bit differently, though as far as I remember, it also uses warnings as errors for consistency.
Also it is a good habit to not have unused variables, and if you have to, make it explicit.
lol I tried to look up Rebar and I got a bunch of building construction pics!