Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!queets!adrianb From: adrianb@queets.stat.washington.edu (Adrian Baddeley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Named arguments? Message-ID: <2179@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> Date: 15 Aug 89 16:38:40 GMT References: <612@windy.dsir.govt.nz> Sender: news@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu Reply-To: adrianb@castor.ms.washington.edu Organization: UW Statistics, Seattle Lines: 28 In article <612@windy.dsir.govt.nz> Robert writes: >This is to support Doug Lea's proposal for "named return values". I >don't want to comment on the specific syntax he proposed - simply to say >we need a better way of getting objects back from functions. Also, what about named arguments? If we ever get a C++ interpreter, we could have problems in calling functions with lots of arguments. Interactive statistical packages (like 'S') use named arguments, e.g. z <- scatplot(x, y, scale=3) Here `scatplot' could be a function that makes a scatter plot object from the vectors x and y; it would be sensible to have zillions of options, scatplot(x,y,aspect,scale,xtitle,ytitle,xmargin,ymargin,etc..) the options need sensible defaults of course. Is there a better solution?? ---- adrianb@castor.ms.washington.edu (until 21 august 1989) Adrian Baddeley, visiting Department of Statistics GN-22, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195, USA. tel (U of W): +1 206 545-2617 / 543-7237