Re: Call by Reference

[fork]

Erik Stensmo <erik.stensmo <at> gnistra.se> writes:

> I found some pages stating that Octave does not support call by reference. As
I understood it, if you modify a function argument (such as an element in a
matrix passed as an argument), Octave will copy the argument (and hence make a
call by value). How are you supposed to write well structured code without a
performance hit? Include files? I think Octave should support call by 
reference. 

Call by reference would break ML compatibility, make debugging code harder, and
with "copy on write" is much less of a performance hit than you might think. 
Additionally, if you are doing something so intense you DO need references, you
might want to write a portion of it in C, C++, or Fortran and compile it into a
 function:  "help mkoctfile"

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