[erlang-questions] Am I leaking memory inside my linked in driver?

[Zabrane Mickael]

Crystal clear Serge.

I'm writing a driver, so i'll stick with "ei_xxx" for now.

Regards,
Zabrane

On Feb 26, 2013, at 2:01 PM, Serge Aleynikov wrote:

> On 2/26/2013 12:52 AM, Zabrane Mickael wrote:
>> Final question: is it better in term of performances to use
>> "driver_mk_atom("ok");" instead?
>> I mean, declare all my atoms (as static variables) once at the beginning
>> and use their references.
>> No need for me to deallocate anything in that case, right?
> 
> The ei_x_encode_atom() and driver_mk_atom() serve different purposes.
> 
> The first one encodes a string into external Erlang binary format given
> a string representation of the atom (i.e. serializes it in a wire-level
> format to be sent elsewhere).  It is to be used to assist with
> communicating with Erlang in a port program running in a separate
> process, and in a driver using the "output" callback function.
> 
> The second one driver_mk_atom() is used in drivers that run in the
> address space of the emulator to create atoms by the emulator.
> 
> So the answer to your question depends on what it is that you are
> writing.  If you are writing a driver, then yes, use driver_mk_atom()
> and you don't need to deallocate anything - atoms are global and not
> garbage collected.
> 
> If you are writing a port program, then driver_mk_atom() has no meaning
> for a port program, and is not part of exported ei interface, so you
> can't use it.