[erlang-questions] Handling unexpected messages (was Re: Erlang shell crashes)

[Ben Butler-Cole]

Jay Nelson said:

> You should also use a catch all message to remove any messages you were not expecting:
> 
> receive
>   {From, expected_msg, Data} ->
>         do_something(Data);
>   AnyUnexpectedMsg ->
>         log_and_skip_handling(AnyUnexpectedMsg)
> end.

I'm writing my first Erlang system and need to decide general policies for this kind of thing. Is there not an argument for exiting if you get an unexpected message rather than just ignoring it? I suppose that opens you up to a denial of service attack if your Pids or process names aren't completely secure.

What is the standard way of dealing with this?

Ben