Re: actual for variable name must be variable compiler error

[Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>]

On 2014-09-30, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:27:54 +0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley
><clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> declaimed the following:
>
>>However, I want to make it clear I don't write production code like
>>that. If an in parameter needs modifying in a C program it gets copied
>>into a local variable and worked on there. Modifying an in parameter
>>in the way it's done in my example just feels so very wrong to me even
>>when the language lets you do it...
>>
> 	The main concept is that the parameter, in C, is effectively already a
> local copy... Changes don't propagate back out (unless one has explicitly
> declared it a pointer type and is doing dereferencing on the pointer; or a
> C++ reference parameter).
>

Yes, I know, but visually it looks really weird in the code especially
when you use other languages such as Ada in which such a parameter is
immutable or other languages in which such a change would be pushed
back to the caller (and trigger a trying to change a literal type error
in this case).

Adam also makes a really good point and there's a good element of that
potential for confusion in the code in my objections as well.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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