Another reason why it’s likely more common is that it keeps things consistent.

When pattern matching outside a function head, the variable is always on the right of the = match operator since the other way around is for variable assignment

defmodule Test do
  defstruct name: nil

  def fun(x) do
    %Test{name: name} = x
    IO.inspect(name)
  end
end

You are right, they are functionally equivalent.

I tend to use the left hand side because when I’m scanning code, its the pattern match I want to focus on first. The binding is the second consideration - especially when there are multiple function heads matching on different constructs.

Just to be different I prefer in Erlang to use the left hand side. To me it looks more like a pattern match which is what I am doing.

+1 to this.

One other consideration: the x = %Test{name: name} shape looks similar to how other languages declare default arguments, versus the struct-on-the-left one which always means “pattern-match”.

This is the best reason I think

More specifically, the variables on the left side get bound (unless you use the pin operator to indicate you want to use an existing variable) based on the data on the right. In a function head, the variables on both sides are bound based on the argument to the function.