Chapter 6
Most of the information on this and other chapters refers
directly to material in Wilson, L.B. and Clark, R.G.,
Comparative Programming Languages (Third Edition, updated by R.G. Clark),
Addison-Wesley, September 2000, ISBN 0-201-71012-9.
The material is intended to supplement the textbook by providing
further examples and discussion.
It is not self-standing, but assumes that you have a copy of the book to hand.
Supplementary Questions
-
Describe the difference between call by value and call by
constant-value.
What is the drawback of call by value or call by constant-value
when structured variables are being passed?
-
Call by reference and call by value-result are used for the
same purpose. Describe how they differ and the circumstances in which
one may be preferred to the other.
Supplementary Questions
-
What is a side-effect? Why should procedures and functions be self-contained?
What is a pure function and why is it especially important that
functions are self-contained?
-
Why are value returning methods not usually self-contained?
Is this a problem?
What is the equivalent of a pure function in an object-oriented
language?