Bit-level binaries and generalized comprehensions in Erlang

Abstract

Binary (i.e., bit stream) data are omnipresent in computer and network applications but most functional programming languages currently do not provide sufficient support for them. Erlang is an exception since it does support direct manipulation of binary data, albeit currently restricted to byte streams, not bit streams. To ameliorate the situation, we extend Erlang's built-in binary datatype so that it becomes flexible enough to handle bit streams properly. To further simplify programming on bit streams we then show how binary comprehensions can be introduced in the language and how binary and list comprehensions can be extended to allow both binary and list generators.