Does the entire Erlang VM get blocked (that is no other Erlang processes are executed) while I write a big file in a separate process ?
+6
A:
The Erlang VM manages an internal (OS-level) thread pool for I/O. Interacting with files will not block the emulator.
In general, file access goes through an IoDevice, which is a wrapper process coordinating I/O. If you work with files a lot, this may slow things down.
file:open/2 provides a raw mode for faster, direct reading/writing of files.
Felix Lange
2010-02-04 15:28:59
See the erl +A flag for this thread pool.
Christian
2010-02-04 17:48:18