[erlang-questions] Why can't I use variables to denote members of a record?

[Ulf Wiger]

Tony Arcieri wrote:
> I ran into a case where it would really be helpful to do:
> 
> Rec#some_record{Member = Value}
> 
> And the Erlang preprocessor bitches:
> 
>[...]
> Am I the first one in the history of Erlang to desire this behaviour?

Not at all. It has in fact been debated quite a lot over
the years.

I once wrote a parse_transform called exprecs that offers
a compromise by letting you 'export' a record, thereby auto-
generating accessor functions for that record.

http://forum.trapexit.org/viewtopic.php?p=21790#21790

I'm guessing that this won't entirely satisfy your needs,
but if so, perhaps you can use it as a starting point for
some similar transformation?

BR,
Ulf W
-- 
Ulf Wiger
CTO, Erlang Training & Consulting Ltd
http://www.erlang-consulting.com