From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8e64f4db20d57eb5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Call by reference vs. call by value Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169275323 references: <31F10E50.726@egr.uri.edu> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: James said "Since the out parameter is the same variable as the in parameter, if the compiler writers chose to use "reference" for both the in and out parameter then the value of the in parameter would change everytime the out parameter changed. Sounds hokie but they could probably get away with it with the language referenced above." Well passing arrays by reference may seem hokie (isn't that word spelled hoky -- don't really know, it is not in my dictionary :-), but it is quite usual, and is certainly what you want for really large arrays. Most Ada programs will pass all arrays by reference, as will most Fortran programs. To me, a compiler that passed all arrays by copy would be *really* broken -- at least we didnt' go that far in GNAT!