Pattern Matching with And[a,b]

Questions
1

Could someone help me to explain the following strange behavior of Mathematica with the following expression:

In[903]:= Replace[And[a, b], {And[x__] :> List[x]}]
    Out[903]= {a && b}

in comparison to:

In[891]:= Replace[and[a, b], {and[x__] :> List[x]}]
    Out[891]= {a, b}

I expected to get the result of the second example {a, b} for the first expression instead of {a && b}.
In the Pattern "And[x__] " the “And” seems not to be properly recognized for substitution, so that it is still remaining in the result {a && b}.

The second example with the meaningless symbol “and” is working as expected. I guess it is a special behavior of the BuildIn-Function “And”.

Thank you in advance.
Uwe Möhring

2

Because And[x___] is evaluated to x___ before pattern matching. You need HoldPattern here.

3

Thank You,
that is working fine:

In[913]:= Replace[And[a, b], {HoldPattern[And[x__]] :> List[x]}]
    Out[913]= {a, b}