Erlang Cheatsheet

The quirks of exit signals and exception handling you always forget

Trapping Exits

Trapping exits means the exit signals are converted to messages before being sent to the process. Trapping exits is done on a per process basis. Execute process_flag(trap_exit, true). in the process you want to be trapping exits.

Exit Signals

Exit Type Initiated by Not trapping exits Trapping exits
Normal exit(Pid, normal) Nothing Receives {'EXIT', Pid, normal}
Normal exit(self(), normal) Terminates normally Receives {'EXIT', Pid, normal}
Abnormal exit(Pid, Reason) Terminates abnormally Receives {'EXIT', Pid, Reason}
Kill exit(Pid, kill) Terminates abnormally Terminates abnormally

Raising and Handling Exceptions

Purpose Expression to generate try catch handling pattern trap_exit message
Stop execution because of runtime error exit/2 error:Reason {'EXIT', Pid, Reason}
Stop execution for any reason exit/1 exit:Reason {'EXIT', Pid, Reason}
non-local return throw/1 throw:Reason {'EXIT', Pid, {{nocatch, Reason}, MFA}}

Errors

badmatch
pattern match error
badarg
BIF called with the wrong type
badarith
arithmetic error
undef
function not defined
function_clause
no matching function clause
if_clause
no matching if clause
case_clause
no matching case clause

Process Relationships

Name Type Purpose Function to Create /
Example Calls		 Function to Destroy /
Example Calls
Link Symmetrical Propagate exit signal from a process to all linked processes link/1, spawn_link/1,2,3,4
link(Pid).		 unlink/1
unlink(Pid)
Monitor Asymmetrical Sends a message to the monitoring process when the monitored process dies monitor/2, spawn_monitor/1,3
monitor(Pid)		 demonitor/1,2
demonitor(Pid)