[erlang-questions] Message Receive Semantics (was eep: MultiplePatterns)

[Steve]

Many thanks all - I consider myself fully "clarified" on this issue.

Also - forewarned is forearmed - I actually do have a number of high
volume "priority queues" in my current application effort - hence my
initial interest in this thread. I admit that I was being a touch
disingenuous in phrasing my question but it seemed the briefest way to
get to the point - i.e. ask the dumbest relevant question possible. I
was avoiding using pattern matching on receive exactly because of this
nagging issue about "dead messages" - but maybe I'll review this
approach given what's been said.

I do have a concern that e.g. if you scan through and so end up with a
box full of low priority messages and then a new high priority message
arrives... that the scan will have to go through all the old messages
to get a match to the new high priority one... but I think I'll leave
my concerns about that to when the app is working correctly and I can
do some genuine performance measurements - unless anyone has some rule-
of-thumb guidelines/gotchas I should be aware of before I commit to
this path?

Regs,
Steve