Once-only evaluation of default parameter values function definitions

[Fred Ma]

Mike, Shalabh,

Thanks for the confirmations and pointer to more info on
the python paradigm.  Regarding the progress in one day,
I was actually looking at another data munging language
on the first half of that day, but was a bit concerned
about the intricacies of the syntax, and the medium term
impact on development time.  Programs start to get more
involved when I'm trying to "reconstitute" textual
circuit design info that crosses several physical lines,
spanning several files, so I would like the code to be
very clear about exactly what is happening without having
several info terminals open.  I'm actually surprised that I
haven't gotten working code yet, as I thought I would just
"fall into" this cleaner syntax.  Kind of worried, too,
since it seems there's more conceptual infrastructure to
establish before creating useful code, though I'm sure
not all of it is needed to do the data munging I need.
Maybe the documentation is "top-down" rather than "bottom-
up".  Actually, that's not fair either, there's lots of
simple, clean examples of small tasks.  Knowing what is
necessary to know is just always clearer in hindsight.

Fred
-- 
Fred Ma
Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1S 5B6