Mailbox

Noun · Development

Definitions

  1. A message queue associated with an actor or process in concurrent systems (notably Erlang/Elixir and Akka), where incoming messages are buffered until the owning actor is ready to process them sequentially. Mailbox semantics — bounded vs. unbounded, ordered vs. priority — significantly affect system backpressure behavior.

    In plain English: An inbox where messages wait in line until the recipient is ready to handle them, used in systems where components communicate by passing messages.

    Example: "The actor's mailbox grew to 50,000 messages because it couldn't process fast enough — we added backpressure to the producer."

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