Parse or Pass?

Martin P. Hellwig mhellwig at xs4all.nl
Tue Sep 4 22:13:15 EDT 2007


Martin v. Löwis wrote:
<cut>
> If I extrapolate my experience with German IT language, I
> think people often use terminology they have not fully
> understood. I often ask my students what the difference
> between "eingeben", "ausgeben", "übergeben" und
> "zurückgeben" is when they start saying that "die
> Funktion gibt das Ergebnis aus".
> 
> Regards,
> Martin

Interesting, I lived my early childhood in Germany and somehow, now I 
see it all written in once, I have the feeling I get more confused. So 
would you agree with my interpretation?

Eingeben = <Giving in> Input: (A bit of) data from outside the function
Ausgeben = <Giving out> Output: (A bit of) data to display, network 
connection or file
Zurückgeben = <Giving back> Return: (altered)(bits of) data (from Input) 
to Output

Can I assume that Return in general always means that the particular 
function has exited with that? If not what is the difference then 
between Output and Return?

Another thing is that with the above statement the opposite could be 
true too, meaning  that Input in the German meaning would only been done 
when the function is initiated but how do you call the other input then? 
The appropriate German word would be "Zugeben", which translates to 
Enter (Giving too).

And then we have "Übergeben" which translates to throughput (giving 
over), which in my view is just something that gets data in and puts it 
out, contextually unaltered.  But would that do that with exiting the 
function or not? If it's not both what's the other one called? 
"Übernemen" perhaps (Taking over)?

Hmm feels like textbook classics, only if I knew which book, probably 
programming 101 :-)

-- 
mph



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