Today I Learned

hashrocket A Hashrocket project

`ets` table gets deleted when owning process dies

You can create a new ets table with:

:ets.new(:chris_table, [:named_table])

And you can confirm it was created with:

:ets.info(:chris_table)
[
id: #Reference<0.197283434.4219076611.147360>,
...
]

Now check this:

spawn(fn -> :ets.new(:spawn_table, [:named_table]) end)

Let's see if it was created:

:ets.info(:spawn_table)
# returns :undefined

What gives? The erlang ets docs say this:

Each table is created by a process. When the process terminates, the table is automatically destroyed.

So, spawn created the process and then terminated, so :spawn_table got deleted when the process died.

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