🚀 go-pugleaf

halasz@caip.rutgers.edu wrote:
>What with all this stuff propozed for new standard C, one thing I want
>to see, the return-parameter.  A function is declared with a set of
>parameters meant to forward to it arugments passd in calling it.  The
>declaration for returning looks quite different, and there is no real
>need for "return" to return anithing.  Indeed, it were better if it not.

I have not coded in Pascal for almost thirteen years and then for only about a
year, but just about every time I write a function in C that returns a value, I
kinda miss this feature. In C, the idiom is 1. you specify the return type, 2.
you declare an object to hold the return value, 3. you assign a value to the
object, and finally 4. you return the value. Seems kinda redundant. Instead of
this:

   NODE *foo(void) {
      NODE *result;
      ...
      result = x;
      ...
      return result;
   }

You could have this:

   NODE *foo(void) result {
      result = x;
   }

But, having said that, there is an advantage to the idiom besides the
let-C-be-C maxim--it makes explicit that execution of the function is
terminated at this point and that this is the value that is returned. I think
this outweighs the brevity of a "return-parameter."

-- 
Paul Long                               45:29:14N 122:48:09W
plong@perf.com                          http://www.teleport.com/~pciwww/
"Wagging head and tail, the red-tailed fish, unsupported, turns around."