When to use a variable vs simple value returning function

Questions & Help Questions
11

Something that noone has mentioned yet, is that module attributes are only available in the module they are defined in. So if I have

defmodule A do
  @pi 3.14159
end

And I have

defmodule B do
  def pi, do: 3.14159 
end

Then I can do this:

B.pi() # 3.14159

But I cannot get the constant value I’ve defined in A. Sometimes I’ll actually do something like

defmodule Example do
  @constant "..."
  def constant, do: @constant 
end

The reason for this is inside the module it’s defined in I’d use it as a module attribute to quickly tell myself that this is a constant value. And the public function tells me that this constant is used elsewhere in the code, not just this module.