OpenEuphoria

RE: Changing Euphoria

• Posted by kbochert at ix.netcom.com Jan 30, 2002
• 405 views

-------Phoenix-Boundary-07081998-

Hi Shawn Pringle, you wrote on 1/29/02 1:30:25 PM:

>
>When it comes to changing something that is so simple and clean I
>cringe.  Euphoria was been around a long time with out many changes had
>bugs which must have been many years old.  When languages change
>programs break and implementations break.  The new bugs might show up in
>the interpreter or the 'compiler'.  Many proposed changes are features
>of C that people want in EUPHORIA because they are used to C.
>Things that need features in C are not needed in EUPHORIA:
>
>For Example:
>Pass by reference:
>
>scanf would be something like
>procedure sscanf( sequence str, sequence fmt, sequence& inputs )
>
>On the other hand, in today's EUPHORIA the same thing can be implemented
>with
>function sscanf( sequence str, sequence fmt ) -- return user input
>
>
>Regards,
>Shawn Pringle
>
As I see it, there are 2 advantages to pass-by-reference:

1) More efficient.
   foo = modify(foo)  -- involves a couple of copy operations
   modify (!!foo)	 -- modifies in place (my pass-by-reference syntax)

2) Object orientation
   Methods are automatically passed the instance they are
   to work on ('this')  as the first parameter. Methods which
   modify the instance and also return a value are extremely
   awkward without 'this' beng passed by reference.

It adds complexity and power, but it does indeed compromise the
simplicity that makes Euphoria so attractive.

Karl Bochert

-------Phoenix-Boundary-07081998---