Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!quintus!ok From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: aGREeable features (was Re: Algol-68 down for the count) Keywords: Algol-60,call-by-name,copy-rule Message-ID: <831@quintus.UUCP> Date: 9 Dec 88 05:33:47 GMT References: <406@ubbpc.UUCP> <3688@hubcap.UUCP> <2070@garth.UUCP> <796@quintus.UUCP> <2130@garth.UUCP> <820@quintus.UUCP> <2147@garth.UUCP> Sender: news@quintus.UUCP Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc. Lines: 24 In article <2147@garth.UUCP> phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps) writes: >Incidentally, the term used by the Revised Report [1962] that I have >is "call by name"[italicized]; was it called "pass-by-name" in the >Algol 60 Report [1960] that you cite, or is it U.K. regional terminology ? >I have been treating them as synonymous for this discussion. I have no idea what the proper term is, take pass-by-name as idiolect. Looking in Michael Gordon's "The denotational description of programming languages", we find For us, _procedure calling_ is the processing of the actual parameter expressions to yield some (partially or fully) evaluated value, whereas _parameter passing_ is the further processing of this value to yield whatever is eventually bound to the formal parameter. ... It would, perhaps, have been better to have given the various parameter passing methods names such as "pass by value" or "pass by reference" and so have been able to use :call by" exclusively for calling methods -- however we defer to convention. and the next section is 8.5.1 Call by closure (Algol 60 call by name) which would suggest that the UK convention is "call by name". It is embarrassing to be caught out like this, and I beg the net's indulgence. (The BCPL manual speaks of "pass by value". What to do?)