Re: Design philosophy - why use a VAR for a single return value?

[Eric Streit]

hi,

I completely agree with Benjamin here :  the VAR return parameter is 
super important : it modifies the value "in place" ; no need for a new 
variable. (no copy, no waste of memory, few processor cycles). And if 
possible, it would be an "atomic" operation. (multithreading)

And no confusion between the original one and the new you create if you 
don't use VAR; they will have different values; and there is no way to 
know which one is "the one".

Best regards

Eric

On 25/03/2024 23:32, Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Mar 2024 at 04:08, Tony Wallace wrote:
>
>     I totally support this move.  As a functional programmer this makes
>     sense.  If a bit set operation updates variable for example, this can
>     be achieved with an assignment to the return value of the function.
>
>
> You also "totally" ignored my response.
>
>         I used VAR parameters in the set bit and clear bit procedures.
>         They are supposed to be destructive.
>
>         And yes, that is for efficiency, because if you use a function
>         and then assign the result to the original operand, this would
>         result in an additional unnecessary copy operation. If you use
>         low-level operations like setting and clearing individual bits,
>         there may be quite a lot of bit operations in an inner loop and
>         then the copying will add up. And the uses cases for such
>         operations are mostly destructive anyway.
>
>
> I trust this clarifies.
> benjamin