[erlang-questions] Erlang introspection

[Charles Ahn]

Isn't there also a problem about memory use in this case? Because  
atoms are never garbage collected, if this service runs too long you  
could completely run out of memory as people try all kinds of weird  
function names.

Furthermore, you can get around having exactly 3 arguments by passing  
the arguments in a list to apply.

Charles
On Nov 25, 2008, at 5:46 PM, Andrew Stone wrote:

> If both sides are erlang you can send the actual fun(), otherwise,  
> on the receiving end you can do list_to_atom on the function name  
> and then call the function with the arguments. For instance you  
> could do something like this.
>
> you've received a string "fun_name", with arguments A, B, C.
>
> Func = list_to_atom("fun_name"),
> Func(A,B,C).
>
> Of course you need the actual function to exist and the parameters  
> to be valid. And IMHO, you also really don't want to be doing stuff  
> like this over a network unless you are VERY careful.
>
> -Andrew
>
> From: Matthew Williams <Matthew_Williams@REDACTED>
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 7:58:21 PM
> Subject: [erlang-questions] Erlang introspection
>
> I'm trying to find information about erlangs support for  
> introspection. I've got a program that receives and function name  
> and arguments through a socket and I'd like to use this information  
> to make a function call on the module that receives it. Can anyone  
> suggest a good starting point for finding out how to do this?
>
> Thanks
>
> Matt
>
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