Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!valens!dlw From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Default argument values Message-ID: <399@odi.ODI.COM> Date: 25 Jul 89 23:42:28 GMT References: <43253@bbn.COM> <20077@paris.ics.uci.edu> Sender: news@odi.com Reply-To: dlw@odi.com Followup-To: comp.lang.c++ Distribution: comp Lines: 15 In-reply-to: schmidt@glacier.ics.uci.edu's message of 25 Jul 89 18:09:14 GMT In article <20077@paris.ics.uci.edu> schmidt@glacier.ics.uci.edu (Doug Schmidt) writes: There's also another problem. Allowing ``named parameters,'' a la Ada, weakens information hiding, since formal parameter names are now visible *outside* their original scope! You can allow the formal parameter name to be different from the outside-visible keyword name. Common Lisp allows this. They're the same by default but you can control it if you want to. People interested in this sort of language feature might want to check out Common Lisp, which has had it for a long time. However, I'm not sure there's much point to discussing it on comp.lang.c++. I like the idea too, but based on the philosophy of C++ evolution that I've heard, as I understand it, this is not the sort of change we're likely to see in C++.