[erlang-questions] Re: list size 'causing VM "problems"

[Steve Davis]

Hendrik Visage wrote:
> the:
>  List=read_lines(FD).
> executes, doesn't *appear* to be using lots of VM space, and it
> outputs the partial (being the shell it only prints a part of the
> lines with the [...]...] stuff.

This appears to be an improvement!

> Then it *hangs* at that, not showing the prompt (this is inside
> Aquamacs's erlang shell mode). This is then where it appears the
> system goes "west", as the memory utilization (as measured/shown by
> the MacOSX Activity Monitor) starts to grow and grow. with the last
> test (using the Accumulator as below) it grew to 7G at which point I
> killed the beam.smp process.

Next I'd suspect your regex is causing issues. Try some logging to 
figure out what lines are causing issues with the regex expression you 
defined (and perhaps incorporate Ulf's suggestion to use binaries).

If you don't find a solution there, it could well be that you'll have to 
push the results out to ETS as Ulf suggested (and my experience is that 
Ulf is generally right about such things - not to mention the fact that 
he has many more years of experience with OTP than I do).

/s