[erlang-questions] max timeout

[Serge Aleynikov]

Alpár Jüttner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As I recall, someone noted on that thread that timer:sleep() works well
> for arbitrarily large numbers.
> 
> Now I looked at the source and found that this is _not_ true. Strangely
> enough, all the functions of the timer modules seem to work correctly
> with large numbers _except_ timer:sleep() which has a definition as
> simple as this:
> 
> sleep(T) ->
>     receive
>     after T -> ok
>     end.

This is the reason why in this thread I was questioning the max timeout 
of the receive statement as opposed to timer:sleep/1 implemented in 
bytecode. ;-)

> It might be worth fixing.
> 
>> 1. 2^32 (this is what's documented, but only seems to work in the shell)
>> 2. 2^32-1 = 49.5 days
>> 3. Erlang's small integers (2^27-1 = 1.5 days)
> 
> 4. timer.erl says this:
> -define(MAX_TIMEOUT, 16#0800000).

Though, if you look at the use of this define in timer.erl, it's there 
merely to prevent the cleanup loop of already timed-out timers from 
dealing with bignums, so it doesn't quite tell us about the intended 
design of the receive statement.

Regards,

Serge