There's a section about pattern matching and binaries at https://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/binaryhandling.html https://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/bin

There's a section about pattern matching and binaries at https://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/binaryhandling.html https://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/binaryhandling.html Compiling with the bin_opt_info flag (erlc +bin_opt_info Mod.erl) will list the points in your code where binaries are created during pattern match, or any other points where binaries could be shared, but are not.