erlang “erl_nif” functionality

Question

I have interfaced Erlang mainly through port drivers but now with the advent of the erl_nif functionality, I am wondering if I should invest in Port Drivers anymore.

Will the erl_nif functionality boom or bust like FFI?

Answer 1

Ports and NIFs have different properties and model different types of things: ports behave as processes and you communicate with them through normal message passing, while the NIFs look like normal function calls. So it really depends what you want to interface and how they behave. Both have their place.