Programming Erlang, 2nd Edition

Appendix 3A Simple Execution Environment

In this appendix we’ll build a simple execution environment (SEE) for running Erlang programs. The code is in an appendix rather than the main body of the book since it is rather different in character. All the code in the book is intended to be run in the standard Erlang/OTP distribution, whereas this code deliberately makes minimal use of Erlang library code and tries to use only the Erlang primitives.

When confronted with Erlang for the first time, it’s often unclear what belongs to the language and what belongs to the operating environment. OTP provides a rich environment, akin to an operating system for running long-lived distributed Erlang applications. But exactly what functionality is provided ...