On 2011-05-05, harrismh777 <harrismh...@charter.net> wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> In fairness, he's not the only one. M Harris has twice now linked to an
>> IBM site that describes pass-by-reference in C in terms of passing a
>> pointer to the argument you want as the argument. Admittedly, doing so
>> gives you almost the same behaviour, except that you have to dereference
>> the pointers yourself.
>>
>> That's a pretty big difference though, and gets to the core of the
>> argument: it's a bit like arguing that manual cars are fitted with
>> exactly the same automatic transmission as auto cars, it's just that you
>> have to engage the clutch and shift gears yourself.
>
>
> ... and actually, if you feel it just right and you have just the
> right synchro-mesh setup, you can slide from 3rd into 4th without
> every touching the clutch peddle...
That's possible on pretty much any modern automotive or small-truck
transmission, and it's not really that hard to do. I can go from 1st
up to 5th and back down to 1st without touching the clutch. I don't
as a habit do it, because it puts unnecessary wear on the syncros (and
I've had cars with pretty weak syncros -- Alfa-Romeo Spyders were
famous for the 2nd gear syncro wearing out).
> and if that isn't automatic, I don't know what is....
No, that's _not_ automatic if you have to do it yourself. It's
automatic when it happens without user-intervention.
Now I think you're trolling...
--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I want to dress you
at up as TALLULAH BANKHEAD and
gmail.com cover you with VASELINE and
WHEAT THINS ...
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
