Re: About conversions

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> In article <u8zqe5klh.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov>,
>   Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
> > Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> > convert an out parameter would happen about as often as
> > needing to convert an in parameter, or a function result.
>
> Not at all! Because you think of an out parameter as an Lvalue,
> and conversions are not allowed as left sides in assignments.
> If you really believe the above, you would want backwards
> conversions on the left of assigments.
>
> Note that all other comparable languages allow conversions for
> input parameters, NONE of them allows these strange out
> conversions.
>
> Good advice is to avoid this feature almost always.

To avoid it requires declaring another "receiving variable" of the
correct type, and then converting it with a subsequent assignment.
This is not only inconvenient, but would create an extra source
of "duplicated variables", which complicates what would otherwise
be a simpler piece of code.

Consequently, I like the feature ;-)

>
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