Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsfeed.cit.cornell.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!ames!news.hawaii.edu!phinely
From: phinely@Hawaii.Edu (Peter Hinely)
Subject: Call by reference in Dylan
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: uhunix4.its.hawaii.edu
Message-ID: <DH9vDE.HDM@news.hawaii.edu>
Sender: news@news.hawaii.edu
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 17:32:02 GMT
Lines: 19

Maybe someone out there can shed some light on this topic:

Why doesn't Dylan support "call by reference" (similar to C++)?  Coming 
from a C/C++ background, such a feature would seem like it would be a 
standard thing to support in function calls.  

Isn't there extra overhead in creating a new instance of an object, 
copying the values of the original object to the new object when you 
"call by value"?  It seems that with call by reference, Dylan would only 
have to do type checking.

Does "call by reference" have other implications to program structure or 
something?

If Dylan doesn't support call by reference, how are destructive fuctions 
such as sort! implemented?   As macros?

Thanks in advance.

