[erlang-questions] what is the -F switch on to_erl for?

[Matthias Lang]

Hi,

Short:

   does anyone know what the -F switch on 'to_erl' is actually for?

Long:

   to_erl has a -F switch (force) which connects to the 'run_erl' FIFO
   even if another process has already connected.

   It works, but the effects are so weird that it seems useless. If I
   use -F to let two to_erl processes connect to the same node, then
   output (e.g. echoed keystrokes) ends up partly in one process and
   partly in another, making them both useless. (I first hoped there
   might be a clever mechanism in there which sends output to
   whichever process most recently sent input).

   I tried it on R14B03 on linux 2.6.35 and a couple of other versions.

   That's not very useful, so maybe -F is actually for solving a
   completely different problem. Does anyone know?

Aside #1:

   I don't think to_erl has a man page. It's mentioned in the
   Embedded Systems User's Guide, but no mention of -F there.

Aside #2:

   The whole 'Embedded' section of the manual looks very old, i.e.

      http://www.erlang.org/doc/embedded/embedded_solaris.html

   talks about systems with 64 M of RAM and refers to Solaris 2.5.1
   (from 1996!!). Same problem for Windows NT and VxWorks.

   If I submit a documentation patch which deletes the whole section,
   will anyone be upset?

Matt