Elixir Reference And Pid Data Types

TL;DR

In the previous post, we introduced Elixir Closure. Today we present the last two Elixir Basic Types, Reference, And Pid. This post is part of the functional language series, and it is based on the remarkable book Elixir In Action by Sasa Juric.

Processes

Elixir is a programming language that runs on BEAM virtual machine. Erlang was the first programming language for BEAM, but the biggest issue with Erlang was that you created a lot of boilerplate (repeating) code. Elixir is functional programming with Ruby code readability using functions and modules, boilerplate generation is minimum. The core part of the BEAM is Processes, where Reference and Pid and basic Elixir data type are used in the context of Processes. You can not add two References or Pids.

Reference

It is almost a unique value that is handy in functions related to Processes.

Pid

Pid is an Elixir data type that describes a Process.

Remember

• core BEAM feature are Processes
• Pid and Reference are used with Processes.