Re: Type Specification of net:getnameinfo()

On 2021-01-26 21:46, Nalin Ranjan wrote:
> 2. In this particular case of type specification, the only difference is in
> one of the parameters of the function. I was also wondering if we could
> have used a union instead to write the same type spec, it would have been
> simpler?
> For example,
> Instead of writing a type spec like this
> 
> -ifdef(SOME_PRAGMA_CONDITION)
>           SomeVar :: xxx_type().
> -else
>          SomeVar :: yyy_type().
> 
> We could specify the same type spec as:
>         SomeVar :: xxx_type() | yyy_type().
> 
> Any reason we preferred the former over the latter?

If Erlang is compiled without socket support, some types will not exist at
all. Using the preprocessor[1] makes it possible to provide specifications
with types which actually exist, with or without socket support.

[1] https://erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/macros.html

-- 
Nicolas Martyanoff
http://snowsyn.net
[email protected]