<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2003</year><year>2015</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>Records</title>
<prepared></prepared>
<docno></docno>
<date></date>
<rev></rev>
<file>records.xml</file>
</header>
<p>A record is a data structure for storing a fixed number of
elements. It has named fields and is similar to a struct in C.
Record expressions are translated to tuple expressions during
compilation. Therefore, record expressions are not understood by
the shell unless special actions are taken. For details, see the
<seealso marker="stdlib:shell">shell(3)</seealso>
manual page in STDLIB.</p>
<p>More examples are provided in
<seealso marker="doc/programming_examples:records">
Programming Examples</seealso>.</p>
<section>
<title>Defining Records</title>
<p>A record definition consists of the name of the record,
followed by the field names of the record. Record and field names
must be atoms. Each field can be given an optional default value.
If no default value is supplied, <c>undefined</c> is used.</p>
<pre>
-record(Name, {Field1 [= Value1],
...
FieldN [= ValueN]}).</pre>
<p>A record definition can be placed anywhere among the attributes
and function declarations of a module, but the definition must
come before any usage of the record.</p>
<p>If a record is used in several modules, it is recommended that
the record definition is placed in an include file.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Creating Records</title>
<p>The following expression creates a new <c>Name</c> record where
the value of each field <c>FieldI</c> is the value of evaluating
the corresponding expression <c>ExprI</c>:</p>
<pre>
#Name{Field1=Expr1,...,FieldK=ExprK}</pre>
<p>The fields can be in any order, not necessarily the same order as
in the record definition, and fields can be omitted. Omitted
fields get their respective default value instead.</p>
<p>If several fields are to be assigned the same value,
the following construction can be used:</p>
<pre>
#Name{Field1=Expr1,...,FieldK=ExprK, _=ExprL}</pre>
<p>Omitted fields then get the value of evaluating <c>ExprL</c>
instead of their default values. This feature was added in
Erlang 5.1/OTP R8 and is primarily intended to be used to create
patterns for ETS and Mnesia match functions.</p>
<p><em>Example:</em></p>
<pre>
-record(person, {name, phone, address}).
...
lookup(Name, Tab) ->
ets:match_object(Tab, #person{name=Name, _='_'}).</pre>
</section>
<section>
<title>Accessing Record Fields</title>
<pre>
Expr#Name.Field</pre>
<p>Returns the value of the specified field. <c>Expr</c> is to
evaluate to a <c>Name</c> record.</p>
<p>The following expression returns the position of the specified
field in the tuple representation of the record:</p>
<pre>
#Name.Field</pre>
<p><em>Example:</em></p>
<pre>
-record(person, {name, phone, address}).
...
lookup(Name, List) ->
lists:keysearch(Name, #person.name, List).</pre>
</section>
<section>
<title>Updating Records</title>
<pre>
Expr#Name{Field1=Expr1,...,FieldK=ExprK}</pre>
<p><c>Expr</c> is to evaluate to a <c>Name</c> record. A
copy of this record is returned, with the value of each specified field
<c>FieldI</c> changed to the value of evaluating the corresponding
expression <c>ExprI</c>. All other fields retain their old
values.</p>
<p></p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Records in Guards</title>
<p>Since record expressions are expanded to tuple expressions,
creating records and accessing record fields are allowed in
guards. However all subexpressions, for example, for field
initiations, must be valid guard expressions as well.</p>
<p><em>Examples:</em></p>
<code type="none">
handle(Msg, State) when Msg==#msg{to=void, no=3} ->
...
handle(Msg, State) when State#state.running==true ->
...</code>
<p>There is also a type test BIF <c>is_record(Term, RecordTag)</c>.</p>
<p><em>Example:</em></p>
<pre>
is_person(P) when is_record(P, person) ->
true;
is_person(_P) ->
false.</pre>
</section>
<section>
<title>Records in Patterns</title>
<p>A pattern that matches a certain record is created in the same
way as a record is created:</p>
<pre>
#Name{Field1=Expr1,...,FieldK=ExprK}</pre>
<p>In this case, one or more of <c>Expr1</c>...<c>ExprK</c> can be
unbound variables.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Nested Records</title>
<p>Beginning with Erlang/OTP R14, parentheses when accessing or updating nested
records can be omitted. Assume the following record
definitions:</p>
<pre>
-record(nrec0, {name = "nested0"}).
-record(nrec1, {name = "nested1", nrec0=#nrec0{}}).
-record(nrec2, {name = "nested2", nrec1=#nrec1{}}).
N2 = #nrec2{},
</pre>
<p>Before R14, parentheses were needed as follows:</p>
<pre>
"nested0" = ((N2#nrec2.nrec1)#nrec1.nrec0)#nrec0.name,
N0n = ((N2#nrec2.nrec1)#nrec1.nrec0)#nrec0{name = "nested0a"},
</pre>
<p>Since R14, the following can also be written:</p>
<pre>
"nested0" = N2#nrec2.nrec1#nrec1.nrec0#nrec0.name,
N0n = N2#nrec2.nrec1#nrec1.nrec0#nrec0{name = "nested0a"},</pre>
</section>
<section>
<title>Internal Representation of Records</title>
<p>Record expressions are translated to tuple expressions during
compilation. A record defined as:</p>
<pre>
-record(Name, {Field1,...,FieldN}).</pre>
<p>is internally represented by the tuple:</p>
<pre>
{Name,Value1,...,ValueN}</pre>
<p>Here each <c>ValueI</c> is the default value for <c>FieldI</c>.</p>
<p>To each module using records, a pseudo function is added
during compilation to obtain information about records:</p>
<pre>
record_info(fields, Record) -> [Field]
record_info(size, Record) -> Size</pre>
<p><c>Size</c> is the size of the tuple representation, that is,
one more than the number of fields.</p>
<p>In addition, <c>#Record.Name</c> returns the index in the tuple
representation of <c>Name</c> of the record <c>Record</c>.</p>
<p><c>Name</c> must be an atom.</p>
</section>
</chapter>
