BEAM implementation questions

[James Hague]

Just a couple of questions about the current Erlang implementation:

1. BEAM builds structured constants at runtime, whereas HIPE doesn't. 
For example, consider nouns() -> ["house", "cat", "tree"].  Each time
nouns() is called, four new lists are created with BEAM, whereas HIPE
simply returns a pointer to pre-built data.  Any chance of this ever
being brought over to BEAM?

2. Let's say I have the following code:

receive ready -> do_something() end

Now suppose I send 100 messages to that process and the last one is
the atom "ready".  Is there some kind of high-level checking when a
message is sent to that process, to see that the process is
specifically waiting for a message of a certain format?  Or does the
process simply get executed periodically, scans the mailbox for
"ready," finds that there is none and exits?  (I'm hoping that makes
sense!)

James