As has now been made clear by others, my statement that C did not pass aggregates by value was too facile, i.e., wrong.
It does pass arrays by reference; but it is able to do this only because all C arrays must be and are simplistic, zero-origin ones. The notion of an equally simplistic, one-kind-fits-all structure has proved to be elusive; no such scheme is available for them; and the use of pointers to them (anyway not a bad idea) is thus necessary to avoid the proliferation of copies. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
