OpenEuphoria

Re: Pass by Reference

• Posted by petelomax Jan 13, 2015
• 2272 views

Hmmm. Just some random thoughts:

There is a limit to how far you can or should mollycoddle the developer, but let's not get into a fight over that.

Not all functions return a fixed number/length of results. Some, of course, return an integer on error and a sequence on success.

One thing about

s = foo() 
{x,y,z} = s 

is that it can give extra debugging info.

If we say s = foo() generates an error, what about {s} = {foo()} and s = {fee(),foo()} and g(foo()) and return foo() and... ?

OpenEuphoria (wrongly, imo) also allows foo(), ie implicit discard of all results, without any warning. In Phix I use {} = foo() as the explicit discard.

Regarding extra decorations on function definitions, may I suggest:

function f() 
with multiple_returns 

or

function f() 
with forced_desequence 

or

  return[2] {new,old} 
end function 

or even

  return[2..8] <result built with append etc> 
end function 

any of which means there would be no extra errors or warnings for any legacy code, a definite plus point.

FYI, Phix (already) currently does this:

function f2() 
    return {1,2} 
end function 
 
integer a 
 
--  a = f2() 
--    ^ type error (storing sequence in atom) 

Needless to say, Phix already deduces function return types and therefore I am not as keen on explicit return types as some might be.

Were those thoughts random enough for you?
Pete