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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: technology discussion =?utf-8?Q?=E2=86=92?= does the world need
 a "new" C ?
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2024 13:35:02 +0100
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Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> writes:

> Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On Fri, 12 Jul 2024 13:12:53 +0200
>> Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> But maybe he has looked up some things, since lately he's squirming
>>> by introducing terms like "_true_ pass-by-reference" [emphasis by me]
>>> obviously trying to bend the semantics of the established technical
>>> "pass-by-reference" term to fit his argument.  (Introducing new terms
>>> for existing mechanisms or bending semantics of existing terms with
>>> well established meaning is certainly not helpful in any way.)
>>>
>>> But, yes, that person is a phenomenon.
>>
>> I don't share your optimistic belief that the term "pass by reference"
>> is really established.  Very few terms in computer science (science?
>> really?) are established firmly.  Except, may be, in more theoretical
>> branches of it.
>
> The terms
>
>    call by name
>    call by value
>    call by reference
>    call by value-result
>
> are all well-defined and firmly established, going back more than
> 60 years.  I learned all of these in standard early course in
> computer science sometime in the early 1970s.  Of course I can't
> be sure about the source after all these years, but I expect
> they were defined in the textbook we were using in the class.
>
> Much later, probably under the influence of people learning
> by reading blogs rather than books, some of these terms were
> expressed as, eg, "pass by value" or "pass by reference".

I think it's reasonable to assume that this change of term was partly
motivated simply by the meaning of the words.  Call by value (to pick
one) is an odd term to use about a parameter and/or argument.  The
function or procedure is called, but the arguments are passed and
subsequently accessed.  Nowadays, sentences like "Specifications of
parameters called by value must be supplied" just feel a bit strange, at
least to me.

Had I been CS King, I would have promulgated the terms "accessed by
value", "accessed by name" and so on since it's the access method that
really what matters to my mind.

> However there is no indication that the change was meant to
> express a different meaning, except insofar as the person(s)
> using the revised terms were confused.

-- 
Ben.