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From: Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>
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Subject: Re: Side-Effects in Functions [Rosen Trick]
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In article <slrn9udfg3.4dc.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>, Preben
Randhol says...
>
>What is the difference between a function with in out and a procedure
>with a return value? It amounts to the same thing I think.

I think it would actually give functions *back* their purity. It would allow
functions to continue to be used for non-side-effect functions, but give folks
who would otherwise have to resort to pointers, unchecked_access tricks, or the
Rosen trick in a function a language-defined way to achieve the result they
require. When reading a spec, "function" would be a bit stronger of a statement
about what is going on. Plus folks who feel religously about it could just
outlaw value-returning procedures like they always have for "goto".

However, I think about %90 of this issue would go away if some other method of
modifying "bookkeeping" fields in private types was provided.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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