Elixir Atoms

Section

An atom is a constant whose name is its value. If you’re familiar with Ruby, these are synonymous with Symbols:

:foo

:foo

:foo == :bar

false

The booleans true and false are also the atoms :true and :false, respectively.

is_atom(true)

true

is_boolean(true)

true

true === true

true

Names of modules in Elixir are also atoms. MyApp.MyModule is a valid atom, even if no such module has been declared yet.

defmodule MyApp.MyModule do
end

{:module, MyApp.MyModule, <<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 4, ...>>, nil}

is_atom(MyApp.MyModule)

true