Introducing Elixir, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9. Playing with Processes

Elixir is a functional language, but Elixir programs are rarely structured around simple functions. Instead, Elixir’s key organizational concept is the process, an independent component (built from functions) that sends and receives messages. Programs are deployed as sets of processes that communicate with each other. This approach makes it much easier to distribute work across multiple processors or computers, and also makes it possible to do things like upgrade programs in place without shutting down the whole system.

Taking advantage of those features, though, means learning how to create (and end) processes, how to send messages among them, and how to apply the power of pattern matching to incoming messages.

The Shell Is a Process

You’ve been working within a single process throughout this book so far, the Elixir shell. None of the previous examples sent or received messages, of course, but the shell is an easy place to send and (for test purposes, at least) receive messages.

The first thing to explore is the process identifier, often called a pid. The easiest pid to get is your own, so in the shell you can just try the self() function:

iex(1)> self()
#PID<0.26.0>

#PID<0.26.0> is the shell’s representation of a process identifier; the three integers constitute a triple that provides a unique identifier for this process. You may get a different set of numbers when you try it. This group of numbers is guaranteed to be unique within this run ...