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authorBjörn Gustavsson <[email protected]>2017-09-15 10:06:46 +0200
committerGitHub <[email protected]>2017-09-15 10:06:46 +0200
commitfd831cb49994fac7db32a058afeb3a766c8112b1 (patch)
tree2a2bc6d10aaeeb8728115ab265c38a535b2785e4 /erts/doc
parentdbe18b8380b0619c60cd57c803a9204c04eceadb (diff)
parent0f5c4c923208b63ab645341883637318775d81d1 (diff)
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Merge pull request #1566 from bjorng/bjorn/erts/fix-existing-atom-doc/ERL-453
Document that the compiler may optimize away atoms OTP-14614
Diffstat (limited to 'erts/doc')
-rw-r--r--erts/doc/src/erlang.xml19
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/erts/doc/src/erlang.xml b/erts/doc/src/erlang.xml
index 5afac46d21..2465f49581 100644
--- a/erts/doc/src/erlang.xml
+++ b/erts/doc/src/erlang.xml
@@ -432,6 +432,16 @@ Z = erlang:adler32_combine(X,Y,iolist_size(Data2)).</code>
<seealso marker="#binary_to_atom/2"><c>binary_to_atom/2</c></seealso>,
but the atom must exist.</p>
<p>Failure: <c>badarg</c> if the atom does not exist.</p>
+ <note>
+ <p>Note that the compiler may optimize away atoms. For
+ example, the compiler will rewrite
+ <c>atom_to_list(some_atom)</c> to <c>"some_atom"</c>. If
+ that expression is the only mention of the atom
+ <c>some_atom</c> in the containing module, the atom will not
+ be created when the module is loaded, and a subsequent call
+ to <c>binary_to_existing_atom(&lt;&lt;"some_atom"&gt;&gt;, utf8)</c>
+ will fail.</p>
+ </note>
</desc>
</func>
@@ -2478,6 +2488,15 @@ os_prompt%</pre>
but only if there already exists such atom.</p>
<p>Failure: <c>badarg</c> if there does not already exist an atom
whose text representation is <c><anno>String</anno></c>.</p>
+ <note>
+ <p>Note that the compiler may optimize away atoms. For
+ example, the compiler will rewrite
+ <c>atom_to_list(some_atom)</c> to <c>"some_atom"</c>. If
+ that expression is the only mention of the atom
+ <c>some_atom</c> in the containing module, the atom will not
+ be created when the module is loaded, and a subsequent call
+ to <c>list_to_existing_atom("some_atom")</c> will fail.</p>
+ </note>
</desc>
</func>