Re: assign to magic name-of-function variable instead of "return"

[John Porter]

David L. Nicol wrote:
> 
> I recalled hearing about a language where
> you set the return value of a function by 
> assigning to the name of the function within the function body,

Fortran and Pascal do that.  Maybe others.


> It would mean that
> 
>       sub subname(proto){
>               # in here, the bareword "subname" is a magic
>               # alias for the lvalue this routine is getting 
>               # assigned to, if any.
>       }

But that raises a potential conflict with another proposed magical
meaning of the subname within the sub: as a label for the beginning
of the sub.  I.e.

        sub foo {
                bar();
        }

is effectively

        sub foo {
        foo:
                bar();
        }

so that, for example, redo works kinda like the perl5 goto &foo:

        sub foo {
                bar();
                redo; # which is shorthand for:
                redo foo; # like goto &foo;
        }

Proposals along these lines came up in the thread "$a in @b",
in the subsequent discussion of RFC 199, and probably in other
threads.


-- 
John Porter

A pessimist says the CPU is 50% utilized.
An optimist says the CPU is 50% unutilized.
A realist says the network is the bottleneck.