It is said that atoms are not garbage collected. Once you’ve created an atom, it remains in the atom table, which might cause memory leakage at the end of the day!
I'm fairly new to Erlang, and my question is: How the atoms can be garbage collected? And if not possible, how to minimize that effect?
From learn you some Erlang:
Atoms are really nice and a great way to send messages or represent constants. However there are pitfalls to using atoms for too many things: an atom is referred to in an "atom table" which consumes memory (4 bytes/atom in a 32-bit system, 8 bytes/atom in a 64-bit system). The atom table is not garbage collected, and so atoms will accumulate until the system tips over, either from memory usage or because 1048577 atoms were declared.
This means atoms should not be generated dynamically for whatever reason; if your system has to be reliable and user input lets someone crash it at will by telling it to create atoms, you're in serious trouble. Atoms should be seen as tools for the developer because honestly, it's what they are.
