Update documentation of ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/lib/stdlib/doc/src/ets.xml b/lib/stdlib/doc/src/ets.xml
index 342be80f98..f6f3d18d6a 100644
--- a/lib/stdlib/doc/src/ets.xml
+++ b/lib/stdlib/doc/src/ets.xml
@@ -49,13 +49,22 @@
       associated with each key. A <c>bag</c> or <c>duplicate_bag</c> table can
       have many objects associated with each key.</p>
 
-    <p>The number of tables stored at one Erlang node is limited.
-      The current default limit is about 1400 tables. The upper
-      limit can be increased by setting environment variable
-      <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c> before starting the Erlang runtime
-      system (that is, with option <c>-env</c> to
-      <c>erl</c>/<c>werl</c>). The actual limit can be slightly higher
-      than the one specified, but never lower.</p>
+   <note>
+     <p>
+       The number of tables stored at one Erlang node <em>used</em> to
+       be limited. This is no longer the case (except by memory usage).
+       The previous default limit was about 1400 tables and
+       could be increased by setting the environment variable
+       <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c> before starting the Erlang runtime
+       system. This hard limit has been removed, but it is currently
+       useful to set the <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c> anyway. It should be
+       set to an approximate of the maximum amount of tables used. This since
+       an internal table for named tables is sized using this value. If
+       large amounts of named tables are used and <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c>
+       hasn't been increased, the performance of named table lookup will
+       degrade.
+    </p>
+   </note>
 
     <p>Notice that there is no automatic garbage collection for tables.
       Even if there are no references to a table from any process, it