[erlang-questions] Questions on gen_tcp & flexible parsing -2- (readable)

[Bo]

*** 2nd submission, readable version ***
*** Please delete fist version ***

I have now been programming in Erlang for
quite a while and most things are really
easy to do, but I found some rather tough
issues, here the come:

1)  When using the example server from the
man pages of the gen_tcp / inet unit I have
tried to create an auto update routine,
which does a sort of 
?MODULE:loop(<some parameters>), 
but it seems that the sockets just won't let
go, stick to the running module and as 
expected under the circunstances, after the
second update Erlang moves the sockets out
of the VM and ends the processes, so I cannot
create a socket server which permits to be
updated in runtime.   

Just for info, under any other cicumstances
I have managed to create all my other modules
to be updatable and it works just fine, 
except this simple socket server ??   Does
gen_tcp have problems to do the typical 
?MODULE:loop(X) ??   

2)  Erlang describes that one can limit the 
size of the packet to be received by a socket, 
if it's longer it gets marked invalid and I 
would suppose that it gets dropped, the 
parameter is called packet_size.   I would 
like to limit the packets to be received to 
be of X size, the example below shows 255, 
yet I can successfully send large packets to 
the socket, what's wrong ??   Note: Why do I 
want this ??   I want to avoid problems where 
hackers do a buffer overrun hack and crash the 
server by sending many large packets which then 
write to memory at some point or crash the 
server because it exhausts memory, something 
very common in Windows hacks.  inet states that 
much depends on the underlying OS, which is 
Windows in this case, but I do not know if 
this parameter depends on the OS.

Example:
case gen_tcp:listen(LPort,[{active, false},
{packet_size, 255}, {packet,0},
{recbuf, 255},{sndbuf, 255}]) of
        {ok, ListenSock} ->
        ........
I have even used recbuf and sndbuf which do 
not seem to do anything either.

3) Also, I am writing a small scripted client
to test the server part, now, when I am 
bombarding the server with messages and ask 
it to send these to the other processes I face 
the following problem:   first of all and 
thankfully, Erlang keeps up, the server 
does not seem to crash, yet, when a client 
finally crashes with a stack overflow 
(problably a memory leak or too much data), 
this particular acceptor on the server side 
does not exit, although I have included code 
to make sure that the exit gets trapped, yet 
this process stays alive, instead of closing.   
My question here is has anyone faced this 
before ??   When a client exits normally no 
problem ocurrs, only when it crashes.

4) I am building a command parser which needs 
to parse in commands of the structure 
{CMD:DETAIL}.   Each time the server receives 
a packet it may receive several commands of 
this structure, which is why I need to parse 
a list of commands and the parsing code could 
look like this:

parsecmd(T) ->
    parseusr(T, []).

parscmd("{USR:" ++ T, L) ->
    {Url, T1} = collect_cmd(T, reverse("")),
    parsecmd(T1, [Url|L]);

parsecmd([_|T], L) ->
    parsecmd(T, L);

parseusr([], L) ->
    L.

collect_cmd("}" ++ T, L) -> {reverse(L, ""), T};
collect_cmd([H|T], L)       -> collect_cmd(T, [H|L]);
collect_cmd([], _)          -> {[],[]}.

I would like to call parsecmd(<CMD>,<LIST TO PARSE>)
The problem is that I cannot pass 
"{CMD:" as a parameter, like in the above 
"{USR:", if I do Erlang complains that it 
cannot process that structure, where 
"{CMD:" is a list.   Is there any way this 
can be parametrized ??   Or is there another 
function ??   And no, I have not used YECC, 
because I find its working incomprehensible.   
I can already parse several commands when I 
search separately for "{", "}" and ":" but 
not for "{CMD:" and "}", where CMD is a 
variable that I want to pass to the parsing 
function.

Any help is appreciated, I have researched 
different unit'mans, the whole Erlang Bible, 
other examples but I cannot find a solution 
to those 4 issues, so I am turning to the 
ever so wise community.  

Thanks in advance,

Bo
 
       
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