Python, for all its power and popularity, has long lacked a form of flow control found in other languages—a way to take a value and match it elegantly against one of a number of possible conditions.

The genesis of the PEP was a "nerd sniping email on a Wednesday during COVID" from Guido van Rossum to Bucher to see if he wanted to be part of the effort to try to add a match statement to the ...