According to theElixir documentation, an Atom is a constant whose value is own name. To some Ruby developers like me, an:atom is like a:symbol.

In Elixir, it is common to use atoms onlists,tuples, andmaps:

defmoduleExampledodefexample_paramsdo# tuplatuple={:ok,"This is a tuple"}# listlist=[:slug,:title]# mapmap=%{name:"Diego",age:35,country:"Brazil"}endend

A curiosity in Elixir is that the booleantrue andfalse also is:atoms:

iex>true==:true>trueiex>false==:false>falseiex>is_atom(false)>trueiex>is_boolean(:false)>true

In Elixir, we usually useatoms as a reference status for a given request:

defmoduleExampleControllerdo#...defdelete_person(conn,%{"id"=>id})doperson=Person.get_person!(id){:ok,_person}=Person.Repo.delete(person)conn|>put_flash(:info,"Person deleted successfully.")|>redirect(to:person_path(conn,:index))endend

In the example above, the atom:ok indicates that the delete request was executed successfully. And then a"flash message" was triggered with status:info indicating that"the person was deleted successfully" and, after, redirected to:index.

I hope that this content helps and makes sense to you!

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