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From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>)
Newsgroups: net.lang.f77
Subject: Re: when is a function not a function...
Message-ID: <10988@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 17:31:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.10988
Posted: Thu May 23 17:31:58 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 22:37:48 EDT
References: <10964@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 12

> c This might just be unique to the UNIX(tm) compiler,
> c  or is it standard that functions can be CALLed
> c  and subroutines be (almost) treated as functions?

The only difference between a function and a subroutine is that
one leaves a return value in a place that the caller can find it
(generally a machine register).  Of course it would be nice if
the compiler produced an error message when you misused the
language like this, but this is hard to do in general since the
function/subroutine could be in another (not yet written!) source
file and not enough information is available at link-edit time to
let the linker detect the usage error.