[erlang-questions] How to detect that spawn/4 did not work

[Federico Carrone]

How can we detect that spawn/4 did not work (network split, host down,
etc)? We get an error report but the function returns an invalid Pid and it
is not possible to know if it is a real one or not.

Why does it return a pid even if it did not work and if it can detect the
error (since it generated an error report)?

Regards,
Federico.

---

1> spawn('this.is@REDACTED', erlang, display, [nothing]).
<0.43.0>

=ERROR REPORT==== 8-Aug-2014::16:50:52 ===
** Can not start erlang:display,[nothing] on 'this.is@REDACTED' **

2> proc_lib:spawn('this.is@REDACTED', erlang, display, [nothing]).
<0.56.0>

3>
=ERROR REPORT==== 8-Aug-2014::16:52:21 ===
** Can not start proc_lib:init_p,[<0.50.0>,[],erlang,display,[nothing]] on
'this.is@REDACTED' **

4> is_process_alive(spawn('this.is@REDACTED', erlang, display,
[nothing])).
true
5>
=ERROR REPORT==== 8-Aug-2014::16:53:27 ===
** Can not start erlang:display,[nothing] on 'this.is@REDACTED' **

-- 
http://federicocarrone.com/
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