14 July 2026
Alex Miller

Clojure 1.13.0-alpha4 is now available! Find download and usage information on the Downloads page.

Destructuring changes and additions

Idents after & in :keys!/syms!/strs!/:keys/syms/strs must now be actual keys, not binding symbols. This is a change in syntax since alpha3. Note that symbol keys should be quoted as unadorned symbols are binding symbols.

:or now accepts key→val mappings in addition to binding→val.

Added a new :defaults name directive at top level to bind name to a map of defaults, key→val. Binding symbols in the :or map are transformed to the key value in the :defaults map. :defaults without :or is an error.

:select name, introduced in alpha3, now selects deeply, through nested maps, and fills in values for missing keys from :or. The :select map contains all keys mentioned anywhere in the binding form.

  • CLJ-2964 :select directive in map destructuring

  • CLJ-2966 :defaults directive in map destructuring

  • CLJ-2967 tests for nested destructuring

Other changes since Clojure 1.13.0-alpha3

  • CLJ-2870 Exception phase during top-level eval is miscategorized

Try it out

Update your deps.edn :deps with:

org.clojure/clojure {:mvn/version "1.13.0-alpha4"}

Start a REPL with the Clojure CLI (any version) with:

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {org.clojure/clojure {:mvn/version "1.13.0-alpha4"}}}