[erlang-questions] Change in garbage collector behavior?

[Matthew Dempsky]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Per Melin <per.melin@REDACTED> wrote:
> 2008/5/16 Alpár Jüttner <alpar@REDACTED>:
>> Isn't it possible that the shell somehow wants to pass the result in a
>> message into another process (and therefore copy it)?
>
> To work through the shame I traced the process which grows (which is
> running functions in the shell module) and it does indeed receive a
> message with the value of the assignment. Unless I'm shooting myself
> in the foot again.

That sounds about right.  The values need to be saved somewhere for
them to remain bound even when the current shell process exits/dies.

So your original explanation was technically correct, albeit perhaps
inadvertently so. :-)