[erlang-questions] Automagically figuring out valid process_info Items

Edwin Fine erlang-questions_efine@REDACTED
Wed May 14 07:12:16 CEST 2008


I want to find out, at run time, which info items (e.g. heap_size)
process_info/2 supports. This is so I don't have to go changing code every
time an item is added (or removed, which seems unlikely). What I have done,
which I know is frowned upon, is to use the dreaded process_info/1 BIF to
get a list of supported info items, something like this:

5> [K || {K,_} <- process_info(pid(0,0,0))].
[registered_name,current_function,initial_call,status,
 message_queue_len,messages,links,dictionary,trap_exit,
 error_handler,priority,group_leader,total_heap_size,
 heap_size,stack_size,reductions,garbage_collection,
 suspending]

Two problems.

   - There is a dire warning in red that process_info/1 is for debugging
   only and that process_info/2 should be used for all other purposes,
   presumably on pain of death, shunning, excommunication, finger-pointing, or
   worse :)
   - Not all the supported info items are returned by process_info/1,
   which of course I can't complain about because it's for debugging only.

Short of hard-coding the names of all the info items, or scanning the
documentation at run-time, is there any way to do what I want to do using
only standard BIFs or some other clever thing?

Regards,
Edwin Fine
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