[PL-sem-jr] notes re: erlang

[Dale Vaillancourt]

There was a question yesterday regarding the behavior of linked worker
processes.  Let W be a worker process and suppose it spawns another worker
process V with a link.  If either process dies, a message is sent across
the link.  This message will actually contain a brief "autopsy report".

If V (resp. W) dies of natural causes (it simply finishes its job and
terminates), then W (resp. V) will just continue working.  However, if the
cause of death was unnatural (an exception went uncaught, a supervisor
killed it, etc.), then the linked worker process will immediately die (of
unnatural causes).

If there are any left over questions, let me know and I'll try to track
down answers.

Oh, and if anybody wants to try hacking Erlang code in their copius spare
time, I have an installation on CCIS in:
  /scratch/dalev/Software/erlang
with HTML documentation in:
  /home/dalev/Docs/otp/doc/index.html

enjoy,
Dale