Today I Learned

hashrocket A Hashrocket project

Elixir __struct__/0

When we define a struct via defstruct macro we end up getting a __struct__/0 function on both struct module definition and on each struct map. The intriguing part is that the implementation of the module and the map are different, check this out:

iex(1)> defmodule Book do
...(1)>   defstruct title: nil, pages_count: 0
...(1)> end

iex(2)> Book.__struct__()
%Book{pages_count: 0, title: nil}

iex(3)> Book.__struct__().__struct__()
Book

As we can see Book.__struct__() returns a new %Book{} struct with its defaults, meanwhile %Book{}.__struct() returns the Book module.

See More #elixir TILs
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