How to check if a named table exists or not in ETS Erlang/Elixir

Question

I want to create a table in ets if it does not exists . How can I check if this named exists or not ?

Answer 1

You can use :ets.whereis/1. It will return :undefined if the named table does not exist:

iex(1)> :ets.new :foo, [:named_table]
:foo
iex(2)> :ets.whereis :foo
#Reference<0.2091350666.119668737.256142>
iex(3)> :ets.whereis :bar
:undefined

Answer 2

If you're on an older version of Erlang, you can create a lookup function:

def lookup(server, name) do
  case :ets.lookup(server, name) do
    [{^name, pid}] -> {:ok, pid}
    [] -> :error
  end
end

Information taken from: https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/ets.html