erl-interface - ing type question

[DANIESC SCHUTTE]

Greetings to all the guru's 

thanks again for all the responses on my earlier questions.  Yet again I have to enquire about the following.

We have got a low level api (written in C) conversing between erlang and sybase 12.5 (if anyone is interested).  Previously we sent the requests in to the api as atoms.  Code such as "(strncmp(ERL_ATOM_PTR(fnp), "rpc", 3) == 0)" was used.

I would like to enquire regarding the use of atoms in this case - is it a good thing or would it be more beneficial to be using lists / strings.  Internally in the erlang application we try to send most data as lists - as it makes it easier to manipulate. 

So the first question:  Is atoms a good thing to use for sending data to the api?  and also for receiving data from the api?  - I recall something about only a fixed number of atoms that can be used or some such thing.

If we want to convert to lists - 
the output can be done as 
"colp = erl_format ("{col, ~s, ~s}", datafmt[i].name, coldata[i].value);"  the ~s converting to strings instead of ~a - converting to atoms.  

the question however is - how would we read lists incoming - unfortuanately in erl_eterm.h i see Int / Float / PID / Port / Ref / Tuple Bin / Cons but no LIST - or am I looking for the wrong type.

Or would the easiest way be sending atoms in and receiving lists?

Any comments are welcome.

Thanks to everyone contributing to the list.

Daniel





Danie Schutte
Phone: +27 - 11 - 203 - 1615
Mobile: 084-468-3138
e-Mail: Daniesc@REDACTED

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