[erlang-questions] Garbage collecting binaries

[Scott Lystig Fritchie]

Tom, one other thing to keep in mind ... if you pull in a huge binary,
and then use pattern matching to "pick apart" that binary, the pattern
matching is likely to create sub-binaries that still reference the
original.  So then the chain of who's got a reference to the huge binary
gets more difficult to untangle: if you keep the small sub-binary around
forever (e.g. as part of a long-lived process's state), then you'll keep
the underlying "heap" binary around forever also.

-Scott