Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “In the preceding code snippet, we added a start/1 function, which listens using the default listener_options variable and creates a listening socket to accept incoming connections.”

A block of code is set as follows:

defmodule ExperimentServer do
  # ..  defp recv(connection_sock, messages \\ []) do     case :gen_tcp.recv(connection_sock, 0) do       {:ok, message} ->        IO.puts """        Got message: #{inspect(message)}        """        recv(connection_sock, [message | messages])              {:error, :closed} ->        IO.puts "Socket closed"        {:ok, messages}    end   end end ExperimentServer.start(4040)

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold.

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ elixir experiment_server.exs Listening on port 4040

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold.

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.