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From: Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Beginner's question (array parameters to functions)
Date: 1998/11/28
Message-ID: <m3iug0bbpf.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>#1/1
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Sender: matt@mheaney.ni.net
References: <365F4360.F7E85C1E@columbia.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 21:57:51 PDT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-11-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

greg <ref15@columbia.edu> writes:

> My question is the following:  As I understand it, in an Ada function, a
> parameter must be passed in "in" mode.  Therefore, I assume that in this
> assignment, the sorting function has to make a copy of the array
> parameter, sort the items in this second array, and finally return this
> second array to the caller subprogram, because, given that the array is
> passed as a parameter, there is no way to change the values of the array
> that is copied in for use in the function.
> 
> Is my understanding correct, or is there some way to avoid having to use
> two arrays?

But there are two arrays no matter what: one is unsorted, and one is
sorted.  Having two arrays is a condition of the problem statement, and
has nothing to do with the language.