Re: Realtime cost of call by value

[taltman]

I completely agree. Let's limit the introduction of references to
avoid the inefficiency of copy-down, which leads to the "procedure
call considered harmful" stigma.

Even though it may seem like some to be a "hack", it will avoid a
whole Pandora's Box of trouble by keeping pointers out of the
"script-space" of Octave. If it is really necessary, then it can be
introduced in an OCT-file. Otherwise, the constant-time difference
between FORTRAN-style integer indexing, and direct memory-pointers is
not worth the potential mess.

Just my $0.02,

~Tomer

On Nov 3, 2003 at 8:16pm, address@hidden wrote:
pkienz >The only place a reference is unavoidable is if you want
pkienz >to create a self-referential data structure.  Even in those
pkienz >cases you could simulate it in the  usual fortran style: an 
pkienz >array of nodes and integer indices instead of pointers.
pkienz >
pkienz >Paul Kienzle
pkienz >address@hidden



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