Re: scope and/or parameters (beginner)

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com>]

In article <371c4201.2003123297@news.dsuper.net>,
  fluffy_dong@dsuper.net wrote:
> I know that and I am curious as to why the people who
> designed Ada made it this way, as opposed to the way that
> I described.  If there is
> no OUT then it would/should not matter what is done to
> the value passed because it's not coming back.

The reason, as has been explained is for readability and
safety of the code.

>  Therefore there's no harm in allowing the *copy*
>inside the ourter routine to be modified, since the
> modification will not be copied out.

Yes there is harm, this is confusing code, see my
previous post.

> >Of course the fallacy in that is that the Ada compiler
> >(in most cases) is perfectly free to choose to pass
> >those parameters by reference instead of
> >copy.

No, that's not the reason, and indeed for scalars, where
this is most likely to arise, the Ada compiler is NOT
free to pass by reference
>
> That's the answer I was looking for,

Maybe it is the answer you were looking for, but it is
not the right answer!

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