Steven D'Aprano wrote:
"Side-effect" has the technical meaning in functional languages of any change of state that isn't the creation and return of a function result.
Actually, the term has that meaning for all programming languages. The main distinguishing feature of functional languages is that there are *no* side effects. The confusing thing is that in everyday English the term implies something bad or unwanted (e.g. side effects of a drug). That's not necessarily true of the technical meaning -- often the side effect is exactly what we want, as in the case of "append". -- Greg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
