Skip to Content
Programming Erlang, 2nd Edition
book

Programming Erlang, 2nd Edition

by Joe Armstrong
September 2013
Intermediate to advanced
548 pages
12h 25m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from Programming Erlang, 2nd Edition

The Process Dictionary

Each process in Erlang has its own private data store called the process dictionary. The process dictionary is an associative array (in other languages this might be called a map, hashmap, or hash table) composed of a collection of keys and values. Each key has only one value.

The dictionary can be manipulated using the following BIFs:

put(Key, Value) -> OldValue.

Add a Key, Value association to the process dictionary. The value of put is OldValue, which is the previous value associated with Key. If there was no previous value, the atom undefined is returned.

get(Key) -> Value.

Look up the value of Key. If there is a Key, Value association in the dictionary, return Value; otherwise, return the atom undefined.

get() -> ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Introducing Erlang, 2nd Edition

Introducing Erlang, 2nd Edition

Simon St. Laurent
Erlang Programming

Erlang Programming

Francesco Cesarini, Simon Thompson

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781941222454Errata