Erlang is a programming language and runtime system for building massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability.
OTP is a set of Erlang libraries, which consists of the Erlang runtime system, a number of ready-to-use components mainly written in Erlang, and a set of design principles for Erlang programs. Learn more about Erlang and OTP.
Learn how to program in Erlang.
There are several examples on the website to help you get started. The below example defines a function world/0 that prints "Hello, world" in the Erlang shell:
-module(hello).
-export([world/0]).
world() -> io:format("Hello, world\n").Save the file as hello.erl and run erl to enter the Erlang shell to compile the module.
Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]
Eshell V8.2 (abort with ^G)
1> c(hello).
{ok,hello}
2> hello:world().
Hello, world
ok
Learn more about the Erlang syntax of modules, functions and expressions on Erlang.org.
Erlang/OTP is available as pre-built binary packages by most OS package managers.
apt-get install erlang
To compile Erlang from source, run the following commands. The complete building and installation instructions can be found here.
git clone https://github.com/erlang/otp.git
cd otp
./otp_build autoconf
./configure
make
make install
Alternatively, you can use Kerl, a script that lets you easily build Erlang with a few commands.
Please visit bugs.erlang.org for reporting bugs. The instructions for submitting bugs reports can be found here.