Is this a constraint of some sort or a plain bug ?

The table in the docs1 describing the match behaviour doesn't say anything specific about what the operator does if either side is a list, or how exactly it would treat the return value of a (constant) function... In other words, I wouldn't call it a bug. OTOH, you're not the first to be struck by this somewhat non-DWIM behaviour, and probably not the last...

(Personally, I'd find it more intuitive too, if a list would work like an array in the context of the smart match operator... but I don't know if it's too late to make that change now — or what other reasons there might have been to want it behave the way it's currently implemented.)

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1 search for "Smart matching in detail" (unfortunately there's no respective anchor in that doc, so I can't link to it directly)

In reply to Re: 5.10 smart match behaviour by almut
in thread 5.10 smart match behaviour by zgrim

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