Elixir Engine

Concurrency

Elixir Message Passing

Message Passing

Elixir message passing uses send and receive for communication.

Introduction to Message Passing in Elixir

In Elixir, message passing is a cornerstone for achieving concurrency. Processes in Elixir communicate with each other using message passing, which involves the send/2 and receive constructs. This allows processes to run concurrently and share data without mutable state, promoting fault-tolerance and scalability.

Using send/2 to Send Messages

The send/2 function is used to send messages to a process. The syntax is send(process, message), where process is the PID (Process Identifier) of the target process and message is the data you want to send.

Here's a simple example of how to use send/2:

Receiving Messages with receive

The receive block is used to handle messages sent to a process. It allows a process to wait for incoming messages and perform actions based on the message content. The receive block pattern matches the incoming messages.

Here's how you can implement a receive block:

Using Pattern Matching in Message Passing

Elixir's powerful pattern matching is integral to the receive block. It allows processes to handle different types of messages efficiently. By defining multiple clauses in a receive block, a process can differentiate between various message formats.

Consider the following example:

Timeouts in Message Reception

In some cases, you may want a process to wait for a message only for a limited time. You can specify a timeout in the receive block, after which a default action is executed if no message is received.

The syntax for this is:

Concurrency

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