[erlang-questions] A bug? - bloom filters - and loadable BIFs

[Thomas Lindgren]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Steve Kirsch <steve.kirsch@REDACTED>
> To: Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@REDACTED>
> Cc: Erlang <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:25:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] A bug? - bloom filters - and loadable BIFs
> 
> is there a way to do a destructive setelement?
> 
> This is in the VM, but the compiler rarely generates it.
> 
> Is there a way to force this?
> 

Practically speaking, for this to work in general, the VM needs a generational collector that tracks and handles pointers from the old generation to the new, which the current one does not. Philosophically speaking, just throwing destructive updates into the language is the quick road out of functional programming and into the grottier parts of Lisp. A general user mechanism for Erlang has to be cleaner than that.

(NB: I say this as the original proponent of and user of destructive updates in Hipe :-)

Best,
Thomas