I'm still an absolute newbie in Elixir:
I stumbled over the following example in the documentation or Port objects:
port = Port.open({:spawn, "cat"}, [:binary])
send(port, {self(), {:command, "hello"}})
send(port, {self(), {:command, "world"}})
flush()
How does flush() know, what it should flush? If there would be a port.flush(), I would find it more understandable.
I tried to search the Elixir docs for a documentation for the flush function, but I only found StringIO.flush.
There does not seem to be a Kernel.flush either; at least it's not listed in https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.14.5/Kernel.html .
I would appreciate any pointer of where this function is defined. Also, any suggestion on how to search the online docs of Elixir better, would be highly appreciated.
For use under Iex, see Daniel's reply. For using in a standalone Elixir program, just read the messages from cat with receive (output from the program you spawn are simply regular Elixir messages for the Elixir process):
port = Port.open({:spawn, "cat"}, [:binary])
send(port, {self(), {:command, "hello"}})
send(port, {self(), {:command, "world"}})
receive do
{_, {:data, msg}} -> IO.puts(msg)
end
send(port, {self(), :close})