Suspend a Erlang process by using receive after infinity timeout

Question

I'm new to Erlang and I want to suspend in a function. I use receive with infinity timeout, my function looks like:

suspend() ->
  receive
  after
     infinity->ok
  end.

When I ran dialyzer tool, it return "Function has no local return". Should I replace this function with timer:sleep(infinity). For suspend, which one is better? Thank you so much.

Use the advice from [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/37185394/409228) to eliminate the dialyzer warning: add `-spec suspend() -> no_return().` on the line before the function definition. — Steve Vinoski, Jan 27 '19 at 15:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 27 '19 at 15:25

The function timer:sleep/1 is defined as:

sleep(T) ->
    receive
    after T -> ok
    end.

which is essentially the same as your suspend/0 function, so either approach would work. I'd advise using timer:sleep/1, though, as it's already defined for you, and anyone reading it will instantly know what it is and what it does.

Suspend a Erlang process by using receive after infinity timeout

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