Noob - Getting Started Infinte Loop?

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

The old Jam compiler would generate more efficient code if
the programmer wrote '_' for variables that were not used.
(Variables just prefixed with a '_' were not handled specially.)

The Beam compiler (at least from Erlang/OTP R6B) does not
need any hints from the programmer about variable usage.
In fact, '_' variables are just an annoying special case, so
the compiler gets rid of them by giving each one of them
a new, unique name.

Later, just before code generation, variable life times are
calculated. The code generator is guided by the life time information,
and doesn't generate any code for assigning a variable that
will never be used.

/Bjorn

"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@REDACTED> writes:
[...]

> Note, for example, that in
> 
>     f(X, Y) -> [ignore,X,and,Y], g(Y).
> 
> X and Y are both used more than once.  However, a compiler could (and I
> expect at least HiPE does) notice that [ignore,X,and,Y] doesn't actually
> do anything useful, and the code you get might be the same as that for
> 
>     f(_, Y) -> g(Y).

The Beam compiler does that optimization too. If an expression's value
is not used and the expression does not have any side effect, the expression
will be removed.

/Bjorn

-- 
Björn Gustavsson, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB