Official definition of call-by-value (Re: Finding the instance reference...)

[Antoon Pardon]

On 2008-11-20, greg <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Antoon Pardon wrote:
>
>> You are changing your argument. In a follow up you
>> made the point that call by value should be as it
>> was intended by the writers of the algol 60 report.
>
> No, I was countering the argument that "call by value"
> is short for "call by copying the value". I was pointing
> out that the inventors of the term didn't use any such
> words.

That doesn't counter that that was intended.

> Arguing that their words were intended to imply copying,
> as part of the essence of the idea, is making an even
> bigger assumption about their intentions, IMO.

In their document assignment was a copying.

IMO the bigger assumption is to assume that these people
wanted to define "call by value" for languages which
would have different assignment semantics than their
own.

> Rather it seems to me that the essence of the idea they
> had in mind is that call-by-value is equivalent to
> assignment.

In their particular context.

> Furthermore, I don't seem to be alone in coming to that
> conclusion -- the designers of other dynamic languages
> appear to be using the same logic when they describe
> their parameter passing as call-by-value.

So what. Some designers do and some don't and some
make a particular effort to do different.

-- 
Antoon Pardon