Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!mailrus!ncar!tank!kaon!arthur!paul
From: paul@arthur.uchicago.edu (Paul Burchard)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Semantics of argument passing
Message-ID: <634@kaon.uchicago.edu>
Date: 28 Aug 88 21:53:20 GMT
References: <8808272341.aa21944@ROME.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Sender: root@kaon.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: paul@zaphod.uchicago.edu (Paul Burchard)
Organization: Dept. of Mathematics, Univ. of Chicago
Lines: 25

In article <8808272341.aa21944@ROME.ICS.UCI.EDU> schmidt@HARLIE.ICS.UCI.EDU ("Douglas C. Schmidt") writes:
>
>Towards the bottom of page 180 in Stroustrup's book he states:
>
>``When an argument is passed a hitherto uninitialized variable, the
>formal argument, is initialized.''
>
>Now, unfortunately, this does not seem to indicate what occurs if the
>variable is already initialized.

Perhaps changing the punctuation would make it clearer:

``When an argument is passed, a hitherto uninitialized variable (the
formal argument) is initialized.''

The formal argument is the one whose initialization and ``hitherto
uninitialized'' state are being discussed.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burchard	paul@zaphod.uchicago.edu
``This quote intentionally''
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------