[erlang-questions] process dictionary, anyone?

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

Each self-respecting Erlang hacker should bash the 
process dictionary now and again. I've made it a sport to 
claim that it is no worse than ets.

Considering SMP Erlang, isn't it even significantly better?
I haven't experimented with the process dictionary on 
SMP machines, but it is process local, and can only be
written to by the process, so it should require much less 
locking than ets, right?

A drawback with the process dictionary, compared to 
ets, is that it has no support for match operations (other
than get() and get_keys()). When inspecting it from another
process (which is good for debugging purposes), it only 
allows you to retrieve the entire dictionary.

Both these drawbacks could be easily corrected - at least
the second one. 

BR,
Ulf W
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