What other languages use the same data model as Python?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 05 May 2011 14:14:22 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:

> On 2011-05-05, harrismh777 <harrismh777 at charter.net> wrote:
>> Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> The "pass by value" and "pass by reference" parameter passing
>>> mechanisms are pretty well defined, and C uses "pass by value".
>>
>> Yeah, that's kind-a funny, cause I'm one of the guys (old farts) that
>> helped define them....
> 
> I give up.  You don't seem to understand the C language defintion or
> what is commonly meant by "pass by reference".


In fairness, he's not the only one. M Harris has twice now linked to an 
IBM site that describes pass-by-reference in C in terms of passing a 
pointer to the argument you want as the argument. Admittedly, doing so 
gives you almost the same behaviour, except that you have to dereference 
the pointers yourself.

That's a pretty big difference though, and gets to the core of the 
argument: it's a bit like arguing that manual cars are fitted with 
exactly the same automatic transmission as auto cars, it's just that you 
have to engage the clutch and shift gears yourself.


-- 
Steven