Getting result of a spawned function in Erlang

Question

My objective at the moment is to write Erlang code calculating a list of N elements, where each element is a factorial of it's "index" (so, for N = 10 I would like to get [1!, 2!, 3!, ..., 10!]). What's more, I would like every element to be calculated in a seperate process (I know it is simply inefficient, but I am expected to implement it and compare its efficiency with other methods later).

In my code, I wanted to use one function as a "loop" over given N, that for N, N-1, N-2... spawns a process which calculates factorial(N) and sends the result to some "collecting" function, which packs received results into a list. I know my concept is probably overcomplicated, so hopefully the code will explain a bit more:

messageFactorial(N, listPID) ->
    listPID ! factorial(N).      %% send calculated factorial to "collector".

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
nProcessesFactorialList(-1) ->
    ok;
nProcessesFactorialList(N) ->
    spawn(pFactorial, messageFactorial, [N, listPID]),   %%for each N spawn...
    nProcessesFactorialList(N-1).

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
listPrepare(List) ->            %% "collector", for the last factorial returns
    receive                     %% a list of factorials (1! = 1).
        1 -> List;
        X ->
            listPrepare([X | List])
    end.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
startProcessesFactorialList(N) ->
    register(listPID, spawn(pFactorial, listPrepare, [[]])),
    nProcessesFactorialList(N).

I guess it shall work, by which I mean that listPrepare finally returns a list of factorials. But the problem is, I do not know how to get that list, how to get what it returned? As for now my code returns ok, as this is what nProcessesFactorialList returns at its finish. I thought about sending the List of results from listPrepare to nProcessesFactorialList in the end, but then it would also need to be a registered process, from which I wouldn't know how to recover that list.

So basically, how to get the result from a registered process running listPrepare (which is my list of factorials)? If my code is not right at all, I would ask for a suggestion of how to get it better. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

My way how to do this sort of tasks is

-module(par_fact).

-export([calc/1]).

fact(X) -> fact(X, 1).

fact(0, R) -> R;
fact(X, R) when X > 0 -> fact(X-1, R*X).

calc(N) ->
    Self = self(),
    Pids = [ spawn_link(fun() -> Self ! {self(), {X, fact(X)}} end)
            || X <- lists:seq(1, N) ],
    [ receive {Pid, R} -> R end || Pid <- Pids ].

and result:

> par_fact:calc(25).
[{1,1},
 {2,2},
 {3,6},
 {4,24},
 {5,120},
 {6,720},
 {7,5040},
 {8,40320},
 {9,362880},
 {10,3628800},
 {11,39916800},
 {12,479001600},
 {13,6227020800},
 {14,87178291200},
 {15,1307674368000},
 {16,20922789888000},
 {17,355687428096000},
 {18,6402373705728000},
 {19,121645100408832000},
 {20,2432902008176640000},
 {21,51090942171709440000},
 {22,1124000727777607680000},
 {23,25852016738884976640000},
 {24,620448401733239439360000},
 {25,15511210043330985984000000}]