Basic "What am I doing wrong?" question (Tuple argument to spawn? Dead pid intead of a runtime error?)

[Joe Armstrong]

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, david wallin wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> Well, one thing is that  you call this module 'ctr' but spawn calls a  
> module name 'counter'.
> You could use '?MODULE' instead:
> 
> spawn(?MODULE, loop, [{Name, 0}])

I always use

	spawn(fun() -> loop({Name, 0}) end)

and then you don't need the module name and you also don't need
to export loop/1

/Joe

> 
> saves you headache when you rename modules.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> --david.
> 
> On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 05:50 PM, Jonathan Coupe wrote:
> 
> > I've been spending a mostly pleasant day working through Concurrent
> > Programming in Erlang, and everything made sense... Until I wrote one  
> > of
> > those horrible programs that you often write while learning a new  
> > language,
> > one that seems to follow every rule you've learned and doesn't provoke  
> > as
> > much as a warning from the compiler, but still doesn't work. And of  
> > course
> > it's almost identical to one that *does* work.
> >
> > It's a simple variant on progarm 5.2 from Concurrent Programming. The  
> > change
> > is that a tuple is used to contain both the value for the counter and a
> > name - oh, and I'm registering the counter under that name. An almost
> > identical program using two separate variables instead the tuple  
> > works, this
> > one doesn't. Instead, start/1 - and spawn - seems to return a pid to a  
> > dead
> > thread. (As far as can tell from the debugger, process_info, and  
> > whereis.)
> >
> > Could someone explain what I've missed, and what behaviour I'm really  
> > seeing
> > here? And why I'm not getting a runtime error?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > - Jonathan Coupe
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> > -----
> > -------------
> >
> > -module(ctr).
> > -export([start/1, loop/1, increment/1, value/1, name/1, stop/1]).
> >
> >
> > start(Name) ->
> >  Pid = spawn(counter, loop, [{Name, 0}]),
> >  register(Name, Pid),
> >  Pid.
> >
> >
> > increment(Pid) ->
> >  Pid ! increment.
> >
> >
> > value(Pid) ->
> >  Pid ! {self(), value},
> >  receive
> >   {Pid, Value} ->
> >    Value
> >  end.
> >
> >
> > name(Pid) ->
> >  Pid ! {self(), name},
> >  receive
> >   {Pid, Name} ->
> >    Name
> >  end.
> >
> >
> > stop(Pid) ->
> >  Pid ! stop.
> >
> >
> > loop({Name,Value}) ->
> >  receive
> >   increment ->
> >    loop({Name, Value+1});
> >   {From, value} ->
> >    From ! {self(), Value},
> >    loop({Name, Value});
> >   {From, name} ->
> >    From ! {self(), Name},
> >    loop({Name, Value});
> >   stop ->
> >    true;
> >   Other ->
> >    loop({Name, Value})
> >  end.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>