In Erlang, when do I use ; or , or .?

syntax erlang punctuation
samoz picture samoz · Jul 10, 2009 · Viewed 9.5k times · Source

I have been trying to learn Erlang and have been running into some problems with ending lines in functions and case statements.

When do I use a semicolon (;), comma (,), or period inside my functions or case statements?

Answer

marcc picture marcc · Jul 10, 2009

Comma at the end of a line of normal code.
Semicolon at the end of case statement, or if statement, etc. The last case or if statement doesn't have anything at the end. A period at the end of a function.

example (sorry for the random variable names, clearly this doesn't do anything, but illustrates a point):

case Something of 
    ok ->
        R = 1,     %% comma, end of a line inside a case 
        T = 2;     %% semi colon, end of a case, but not the end of the last
    error ->
        P = 1,     %% comma, end of a line inside a case
        M = 2      %% nothing, end of the last case
end.               %% period, assuming this is the end of the function, comma if not the end of the function

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