[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Confusing comparison with Pascal
call-by-reference
Mikael Tillenius
mti at tillenius.com
Sun Feb 18 06:47:01 EST 2007
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Submitter: Mikael Tillenius mti at tillenius.com
Issue: Defect
Priority: Minor
Component: Concepts
Version: 5.92
Summary: Confusing comparison with Pascal call-by-reference
Description: In section 1, top of right column on page 6 of the report,
argument passing is discussed. Quote "Note that call-by-value refers to
a different distinction between by-value and by-reference passing in
Pascal. In Scheme, all data structures are passed by reference." This
seems to imply that Scheme passes arguments similar to how Pascals
call-by-reference. This is not true, for example call-by-reference would
make it possible to implement a procedure "swap" so that a call "(swap a
b)" would swap the values of "a" and "b".
Proposal: Remove both sentences quoted above, or at least the last one.
/Mikael
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