[erlang-questions] Unlike behavior in -spec and type importing

[Ivan Carmenates García]

Hi all,

 

I was dealing with edoc and -spec attribute and I found a little not liked
behavior regards importing types from another modules.

For examples I was setting the specification of start/2 application start
point function like this:

 

%%%---------------------------------------------------------------------

%%% @doc

%%% Start point of the application.

%%% @end

%%%---------------------------------------------------------------------

-spec start(StartType, StartArgs) -> {'ok', Pid} | {'ok', Pid, State} when

                StartType :: application:start_type(), %% @see application
module for start_type() type specification.

                StartArgs :: term(),

                Pid :: pid(),

                State :: term().

 

start(StartType, StartArgs)->

                . . .

I check the source of application module to see if the start_type() type was
exported and it is not.

And my module compiles well, and even I changed to StartType ::
unknown_module: unknown_type() type and it still compiles,

It seems that there are no type checking outside of the module.

 

All this could seems a little nothing important thing but, I like to program
in Erlang a lot, even without using any IDE, I like notepad++ with Erlang
colors definition.

And I’m proud of my code and the language even more since I learned that I
can do thing like -spec, -type and documentation.

 

The same still happens with functions, I can do
non_declared_module:non_declared_fun() and it will compile. Only in runtime
it will fail.

 

Cheers,

Ivan.

 

NOTE: I apologies for any bad intention you could think I have with this, I
stand for Erlang and its Community.

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