> On 18 Apr 2015, at 11:15, Richard Shann <rich...@rshann.plus.com> wrote: > > On Sat, 2015-04-18 at 11:51 +0200, Urs Liska wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I just stumbled over a terminology issue: are "procedure" and "function" >> synonyms in Scheme or do they refer to different things? > The Guile reference manual uses the term procedure >> >> From my earliest experiences with programming I'd recall the difference >> to be that functions return a value and procedures don't. > > that was a common terminological distinction for some programming > languages at one time apparently.
I think it was Pascal that introduced a distinction between a Procedure (which does something without returning a value) and a Function (which does something AND returns a value). In C there are only Functions, but in many instances the returned value isn’t of any interest and is ignored, so they’re Procedures in all but name. If forced to choose, I like the Pascal way - it makes it quite clear that you intend no value to be returned by a Procedure, and that if you write a Function you really do want a result. Horses for courses, I suppose! Michael > > Richard > > > > _______________________________________________ > lilypond-user mailing list > lilypond-user@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
