Shell is terminated (and then restarts) mysteriously

[Taylor Venable]

Hi there. I'm trying to learn Erlang by working on some simple
programs, and as I'm working with the shell I'm noticing some (what to
me at least is) odd behaviour. Every once in a while, after compiling
some code, it will state that the shell process was terminated. Here's
a real example of it:

44> c(tblxform).
./tblxform.erl:90: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:94: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:94: Warning: variable 'Destination' shadowed in 'fun'
./tblxform.erl:94: Warning: variable 'Source' is unused
./tblxform.erl:94: Warning: variable 'Source' shadowed in 'fun'
./tblxform.erl:106: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:107: Warning: variable 'F' is unused
./tblxform.erl:124: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:138: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:155: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:163: Warning: variable 'Fold2' is unused
./tblxform.erl:180: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:180: Warning: variable 'Source' is unused
./tblxform.erl:213: Warning: variable 'Destination' is unused
./tblxform.erl:213: Warning: variable 'Options' is unused
./tblxform.erl:236: Warning: variable 'Options' is unused
./tblxform.erl:236: Warning: variable 'Source' is unused
*** ERROR: Shell process terminated! ***
Eshell V5.8.1  (abort with ^G)
1>

This has happened to me three times now while hacking away over the
last couple nights, while working on two different pieces of code, in
different Erlang VM instances (in case my terminology is wrong, by
that I mean running separate "erl" commands in different xterms).
After the shell restarts, I can compile and test my code just like I
had been doing in the old shell that was killed, so the problem is
neither persistent nor reproducible. But when it happens, it's fairly
disruptive since anything I had done in the old shell is now gone. I
asked for some advice last night on #erlang and posted the code I was
compiling then at http://ideone.com/weJTP (just a simple program I'm
trying to use to learn some things about Erlang). Obviously the output
here doesn't tell me anything about what might have gone wrong; is
there any way to get more information about why the shell process was
terminated?

Here's the banner information from my Erlang installation:

Erlang R14B (erts-5.8.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [rq:2]
[async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

-- 
Taylor C. Venable
http://metasyntax.net/