Making the move...

[Phil Davis]

Ever the metaphorical thinker, this reminds me of good gun safety 
practices (aka ways NOT to shoot yourself in the foot) - it's all in 
knowing how to control a powerful tool.

Phil Davis

(meant in a lighthearted way and limited strictly to the parallel 
observed - not intended to engender discussion/debate about guns)


Mark Smith wrote:
> I think the point is that when a variable is passed to a function/ 
> handler 'normally', the data in it is duplicated, and if the data is  
> big, this is not as efficient as passing it by reference - obviously,  
> if you need to change the data in the called function/handler, this  may 
> have unwanted side-effects, in  which case passing it normally is  going 
> to be better.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> On 21 Mar 2006, at 02:20, Sarah Reichelt wrote:
> 
>> On 3/21/06, Rob Cozens <rcozens at pon.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> G'day Sarah,
>>>
>>>> In my experience, it's probably due to never passing values by
>>>> reference.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm curious as to why you eschew passing by reference.
>>>
>>> If one needs to pass large variables, why incur the overhead of
>>> duplicating the value of the variable before passing it?  And if a
>>> variable value needed at one level is derived from a routine nested
>>> several calls deep, simply passing the variable by reference through
>>> the nested calls is the simplest way to get the value back to the
>>> original caller.
>>>
>>
>> It's not a philosophy, more ignorance :-)
>>
>> I haven't ever really tested it and I have an instinctive feeling that
>> functions should be self-sufficient and shouldn't change anything
>> outside them. Maybe it will suit me better in some circumstances.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Sarah
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