Programming languages

Most subroutines are parameterized: they take arguments that control certain aspects of their behavior, or specify the data on which they are to operate. Parameter names that appear in the declaration of a subroutine are known as formal parameters.

In our discussion of subroutines so far,we have glossed over the semantic rules that govern parameter passing, and that determine the relationship between actual and formal parameters. Some languages—including C, Fortran, ML, and Lisp—define a single set of rules that apply to all parameters.

p(x);
parameters x : integer – – global

procedure foo(y : integer)

y := 3

print x

x := 2

print x
If y is passed to foo by value, then the assignment inside foo has no visible effect—y is private to the subroutine—and the program prints 2 twice. If y is passed to foo by reference, then the assignment inside foo changes x—y is just a local name for x—and the program prints 3 twice.

Explicit subroutine parameters are not the only language feature that requires a closure to be passed as a parameter. In general, a language implementation must pass a closure whenever the eventual use of the parameter requires the restoration of a previous referencing environment. Interesting examples occur in the call-byname parameters of Algol 60 and Simula, the label parameters of Algol 60 and Algol 68, and the call-by-need parameters of Miranda, Haskell, and R.

Figure 8.3 contains a summary of the common parameter-passing modes. In this subsection we examine other aspects of parameter passing.

As we saw in Section 7.4.2, the binding time for array dimensions and bounds varies greatly from language to language, ranging from compile time (Basic and Pascal) to elaboration time (Ada and Fortran 90) to arbitrary times during execution (APL, Perl, and Common Lisp). In several languages, the rules for parameters are looser than they are for variables.

In Section 3.3.6 we noted that the principal use of dynamic scoping is to change the default behavior of a subroutine. We also noted that the same effect can be achieved with default parameters. A default parameter is one that need not necessarily be provided by the caller; if it is missing, then a pre-established default value will be used instead.

The syntax by which a function indicates the value to be returned varies greatly. In languages like Lisp, ML, and Algol 68, which do not distinguish between expressions and statements, the value of a function is simply the value of its body, which is itself an expression. In several early imperative languages, including Algol 60, Fortran, and Pascal, a function specifies its return value by executing an assignment statement whose left-hand side is the name of the function. This approach has an unfortunate interaction with the usual static scope rules (Section 3.3.1): the compiler must forbid any immediately nested declaration that would hide the name of the function, since the function would then be unable to return. This special case is avoided in more recent imperative languages by introducing an explicit return statement: return expression In addition to specifying a value, return causes the immediate termination of the subroutine. A function that has figured out what to return but doesn’t want to return yet can always assign the return value into a temporary variable, and then return it later:

...

Here rtn can reside throughout its lifetime in the return location allocated by the caller. A similar facility can be found in Eiffel, in which every function contains an implicitly declared object named Result. This object can be both read and written, and is returned to the caller when the function returns. Many languages place restrictions on the types of objects that can be returned from a function. In Algol 60 and Fortran 77, a function must return a scalar value. In Pascal and early versions of Modula-2, it must return a scalar or a pointer.Most imperative languages are more flexible: Algol 68, Ada, C, Fortran 90, and many (nonstandard) implementations of Pascal allow functions to return values of composite type. ML, its descendants, and several scripting languages allow a function to return a tuple of values. In Python, for example, we might write

Modula-3 and Ada 95 allow a function to return a subroutine, implemented as a closure. C has no closures, but allows a function to return a pointer to a subroutine. In functional languages such as Lisp and ML, returning a closure is commonplace.