<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?> <!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd"> <chapter> <header> <copyright> <year>2003</year><year>2010</year> <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder> </copyright> <legalnotice> The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License, Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/. Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations under the License. </legalnotice> <title>Modules</title> <prepared></prepared> <docno></docno> <date></date> <rev></rev> <file>modules.xml</file> </header> <section> <title>Module Syntax</title> <p>Erlang code is divided into <em>modules</em>. A module consists of a sequence of attributes and function declarations, each terminated by period (.). Example:</p> <pre> -module(m). % module attribute -export([fact/1]). % module attribute fact(N) when N>0 -> % beginning of function declaration N * fact(N-1); % | fact(0) -> % | 1. % end of function declaration</pre> <p>See the <seealso marker="functions">Functions</seealso> chapter for a description of function declarations.</p> </section> <section> <title>Module Attributes</title> <p>A <em>module attribute</em> defines a certain property of a module. A module attribute consists of a tag and a value.</p> <pre> -Tag(Value).</pre> <p><c>Tag</c> must be an atom, while <c>Value</c> must be a literal term. As a convenience in user-defined attributes, the literal term <c>Value</c> the syntax <c>Name/Arity</c> (where <c>Name</c> is an atom and <c>Arity</c> a positive integer) will be translated to <c>{Name,Arity}</c>.</p> <p>Any module attribute can be specified. The attributes are stored in the compiled code and can be retrieved by calling <c>Module:module_info(attributes)</c> or by using <seealso marker="stdlib:beam_lib#chunks/2">beam_lib(3)</seealso>.</p> <p>There are several module attributes with predefined meanings, some of which have arity two, but user-defined module attributes must have arity one.</p> <section> <title>Pre-Defined Module Attributes</title> <p>Pre-defined module attributes should be placed before any function declaration.</p> <taglist> <tag><c>-module(Module).</c></tag> <item> <p>Module declaration, defining the name of the module. The name <c>Module</c>, an atom, should be the same as the file name minus the extension <c>erl</c>. Otherwise <seealso marker="code_loading#loading">code loading</seealso> will not work as intended.</p> <p>This attribute should be specified first and is the only attribute which is mandatory.</p> </item> <tag><c>-export(Functions).</c></tag> <item> <p>Exported functions. Specifies which of the functions defined within the module that are visible outside the module.</p> <p><c>Functions</c> is a list <c>[Name1/Arity1, ..., NameN/ArityN]</c>, where each <c>NameI</c> is an atom and <c>ArityI</c> an integer.</p> </item> <tag><c>-import(Module,Functions).</c></tag> <item> <p>Imported functions. Imported functions can be called the same way as local functions, that is without any module prefix.</p> <p><c>Module</c>, an atom, specifies which module to import functions from. <c>Functions</c> is a list similar as for <c>export</c> above.</p> </item> <tag><c>-compile(Options).</c></tag> <item> <p>Compiler options. <c>Options</c>, which is a single option or a list of options, will be added to the option list when compiling the module. See <c>compile(3)</c>.</p> </item> <tag><c>-vsn(Vsn).</c></tag> <item> <p>Module version. <c>Vsn</c> is any literal term and can be retrieved using <c>beam_lib:version/1</c>, see <seealso marker="stdlib:beam_lib#version/1">beam_lib(3)</seealso>.</p> <p>If this attribute is not specified, the version defaults to the MD5 checksum of the module.</p> </item> </taglist> </section> <section> <title>Behaviour Module Attribute</title> <p>It is possible to specify that the module is the callback module for a <em>behaviour</em>:</p> <pre> -behaviour(Behaviour).</pre> <p>The atom <c>Behaviour</c> gives the name of the behaviour, which can be a user defined behaviour or one of the OTP standard behaviours <c>gen_server</c>, <c>gen_fsm</c>, <c>gen_event</c> or <c>supervisor</c>.</p> <p>The spelling <c>behavior</c> is also accepted.</p> <p>Read more about behaviours and callback modules in OTP Design Principles.</p> </section> <section> <title>Record Definitions</title> <p>The same syntax as for module attributes is used by for record definitions:</p> <pre> -record(Record,Fields).</pre> <p>Record definitions are allowed anywhere in a module, also among the function declarations. Read more in <seealso marker="records">Records</seealso>.</p> </section> <section> <title>The Preprocessor</title> <p>The same syntax as for module attributes is used by the preprocessor, which supports file inclusion, macros, and conditional compilation:</p> <pre> -include("SomeFile.hrl"). -define(Macro,Replacement).</pre> <p>Read more in <seealso marker="macros">The Preprocessor</seealso>.</p> </section> <section> <title>Setting File and Line</title> <p>The same syntax as for module attributes is used for changing the pre-defined macros <c>?FILE</c> and <c>?LINE</c>:</p> <pre> -file(File, Line).</pre> <p>This attribute is used by tools such as Yecc to inform the compiler that the source program was generated by another tool and indicates the correspondence of source files to lines of the original user-written file from which the source program was produced.</p> </section> <section> <title>Types and function specifications</title> <p>A similar syntax as for module attributes is used for specifying types and function specifications. </p> <pre> -type my_type() :: atom() | integer(). -spec my_function(integer()) -> integer(). </pre> <p>Read more in <seealso marker="typespec">Types and Function specifications</seealso>. </p> <p> The desciption is based on <url href="http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-0008.html">EEP8 - Types and function specifications</url> which will not be further updated. </p> </section> </section> <section> <title>Comments</title> <p>Comments may be placed anywhere in a module except within strings and quoted atoms. The comment begins with the character "%", continues up to, but does not include the next end-of-line, and has no effect. Note that the terminating end-of-line has the effect of white space.</p> </section> <section> <title>The module_info/0 and module_info/1 functions</title> <p>The compiler automatically inserts the two special, exported functions into each module: <c>Module:module_info/0</c> and <c>Module:module_info/1</c>. These functions can be called to retrieve information about the module.</p> <section> <title>module_info/0</title> <p>The <c>module_info/0</c> function in each module returns a list of <c>{Key,Value}</c> tuples with information about the module. Currently, the list contain tuples with the following <c>Key</c>s: <c>attributes</c>, <c>compile</c>, <c>exports</c>, and <c>imports</c>. The order and number of tuples may change without prior notice.</p> <warning><p>The <c>{imports,Value}</c> tuple may be removed in a future release because <c>Value</c> is always an empty list. Do not write code that depends on it being present.</p></warning> </section> <section> <title>module_info/1</title> <p>The call <c>module_info(Key)</c>, where key is an atom, returns a single piece of information about the module.</p> <p>The following values are allowed for <c>Key</c>:</p> <taglist> <tag><c>attributes</c></tag> <item> <p>Return a list of <c>{AttributeName,ValueList}</c> tuples, where <c>AttributeName</c> is the name of an attribute, and <c>ValueList</c> is a list of values. Note: a given attribute may occur more than once in the list with different values if the attribute occurs more than once in the module.</p> <p>The list of attributes will be empty if the module has been stripped with <seealso marker="stdlib:beam_lib#strip/1">beam_lib(3)</seealso>.</p> </item> <tag><c>compile</c></tag> <item> <p>Return a list of tuples containing information about how the module was compiled. This list will be empty if the module has been stripped with <seealso marker="stdlib:beam_lib#strip/1">beam_lib(3)</seealso>.</p> </item> <tag><c>imports</c></tag> <item> <p>Always return an empty list. The <c>imports</c> key may not be supported in future release.</p> </item> <tag><c>exports</c></tag> <item> <p>Return a list of <c>{Name,Arity}</c> tuples with all exported functions in the module.</p> </item> <tag><c>functions</c></tag> <item> <p>Return a list of <c>{Name,Arity}</c> tuples with all functions in the module.</p> </item> </taglist> </section> </section> </chapter>