One of the fundamental rules of blackbox programming is that a function should never change the value of a global variable. And there are very compelling reasons why this rule exists.
I'm simply suggesting that "passing by reference" as a programming "technique" breaks this fundamental rule.....although I am not suggesting that passing by reference is in itself a "bad thing"....perhaps a necessary evil. All I'm saying is ....have the "rules" changed since I left Uni? Ignatius ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pac mon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 2:30 PM Subject: Re: Fw: [PHP-WIN] Passing by reference... > Some teachers will say this just because they think students are dumb. The > reasoning behind it is that 'if we teach them to pass by reference some > other dumb programmer can accidentally change values around and break > stuff!' Simpletons! > > > >Isn't passing by reference a "no-no" is terms of good programming? At least > >that's what I was told when I studied programming about 12 years ago? > > > >Ignatius > > > > > > > >----- Original Message ----- > >From: "Anthony Ritter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 2:40 PM > >Subject: Re: [PHP-WIN] Passing by reference... > > > > > > > Michael Sims wrote in message: > > > > Yes, that is true. The "tax" function has the ampersand in the > >argument > > > > list, which means that any variable that you send to it gets passed by > > > > reference. This means that any changes to that variable that occur > >inside > > > > the function will actually affect the same variable that is in the > >scope > > > of > > > > the main script. Without the ampersand, the function will only modify > > > it's > > > > own local copy of the variable and leave the one in the main script > > > > unaltered. If you remove the ampersand from the above script and > >re-run > > > > it, then the output of the first echo statement should not change, but > >the > > > > second one will change to 2500 since the function will no longer be > > > > altering the variable in the main script. > > > > > > > > http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.references.pass.php > > > > > > > > Sorry if I'm not understanding your question... > > > .................................... > > > > > > Thanks for the reply Michael. You've answered my question. > > > > > > A happy and healthy new year to you and yours. > > > Tony Ritter > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > >-- > >PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > >To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. > http://www.hotmail.com > > > -- > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
