User's Guide
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Efficiency Guide
User's Guide
Version 5.8.1
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Chapters
Introduction
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Purpose
Prerequisites
The Eight Myths of Erlang Performance
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Myth: Funs are slow
Myth: List comprehensions are slow
Myth: Tail-recursive functions are MUCH faster than recursive functions
Myth: '++' is always bad
Myth: Strings are slow
Myth: Repairing a Dets file is very slow
Myth: BEAM is a stack-based byte-code virtual machine (and therefore slow)
Myth: Use '_' to speed up your program when a variable is not used
Common Caveats
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The regexp module
The timer module
list_to_atom/1
length/1
setelement/3
size/1
split_binary/2
The '--' operator
Constructing and matching binaries
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How binaries are implemented
Constructing binaries
Matching binaries
List handling
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Creating a list
List comprehensions
Deep and flat lists
Why you should not worry about recursive lists functions
Functions
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Pattern matching
Function Calls
Memory usage in recursion
Tables and databases
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Ets, Dets and Mnesia
Ets specific
Mnesia specific
Processes
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Creation of an Erlang process
Process messages
The SMP emulator
Drivers
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Drivers and concurrency
Avoiding copying of binaries when calling a driver
Returning small binaries from a driver
Returning big binaries without copying from a driver
Advanced
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Memory
System limits
Profiling
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Do not guess about performance - profile
Big systems
What to look for
Tools
Benchmarking
Efficiency Guide User's Guide
Version 5.8.1
September 13 2010