Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
Pascal, probably Modula-2, Visual BASIC are closer to the C++ reference
semantics, in that the definition of a function declares how the
argument(s) are passed.
Well, sort of. In Pascal and Modula, and also VB I think,
parameters are the only things that can be declared as having
reference semantics, whereas references in C++ are first-class
things that can be stored in any variable.
I don't have Java textbooks locally (in storage 15 miles away) but from
what I recall, it too has the complication of splitting between "simple
types" and "reference types" ("boxed" I believe is the term used in books).
The default passing mechanism would be similar to the description of C#
("boxed" types being implicit copies of references allowing mutation
in-place, but assignment to the parameter itself has no effect on the
caller). I suspect it too has some means to explicitly produce a
by-reference parameter.
No, Java doesn't have by-reference parameters, which can be
annoying at times when combined with the fact that it doesn't
have anything like Python's easy tuple returning and unpacking.
--
Greg
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