Re: Easy question about Character manipulation

["(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 31/1/07 23:01, in article wcc8xfiztqi.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com, "Robert A
Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:

> The important things are assignment statements, initialization (which
> Pascal doesn't have in the Ada sense), parameter passing (with or
> without 'var'), and function return.  From what you've explained, all
> except 'var' parameters behave the way Jeff says above.

Yup.
 
> What's the rationale for treating 'var' specially?  As I recall, there's
> also a special rule in Pascal that you can't pass a component of a
> packed record or array to a 'var' parameter.  Isn't that enough?

I think this was a matter of backward compatibility with existing
implementations, and our "no new language design by committee"
self-denying ordinance.

(We broke that only to introduce conformant array parameters,
at the urgent request of Hoare and with Wirth's explicit approval.)

I guess there are also run-time checking overheads that would have been
more of an issue in 1977 than 2007.

I don't think that relaxing the rules for var parameters was ever
seriously discussed, but to be honest my memory of this is close to nil.

-- 
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk