[airstrike]

Yes, and this is incredibly disappointing.

Couldn't we achieve the same functionality with a little less ambiguity using the following syntax?:

    not_found = 404
    match status:
        case not_found:
            return "Not found"
            
        case _ as foo:
            do_something(foo)
            return "Match anything"

it even works for the example in PEP 365

    match json_pet:
        case {"type": "cat", "name": _ as name, "pattern": _ as pattern}:
            return Cat(name, pattern)
        case {"type": "dog", "name": _ as name, "breed": _ as breed}:
            return Dog(name, breed)
        case _:
            raise ValueError("Not a suitable pet")

[pfalcon]

I'm with everyone on "incredibly disappointing" valuation. But being pragmatic, I had to accept the idea "it can be addressed later" vs continuing this mess. And there was truly mess, e.g. PEP642, which initially tried to addressed just this issue, turned in a hairy monster trying to random-patch pattern matching considerably in rather weird ways.