Re: technology discussion → does the world need a "new" C ?

On 7/9/24 14:55, BGB wrote:
...

The pass by reference, in this context, was referring to the ABI, not
to C itself.
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It looks from C's POV as-if it were by-value.
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Which it is, depends on if one is looking at things at the language
level, ABI level, or IR level, ...

The C standard doesn't explicitly specify pass by value, or pass by
reference, or anything other passing mechanism. What it does say is what
a programmer needs to know to use the passing mechanism. It says that
the value of a function parameter that is seen by the code inside that
function is a copy of the value passed as an argument to the function.
The copy can be modified without changing the original. When a C
function's declaration looks as though it takes an array as an argument,
what that declaration actually means is that it takes a pointer value as
an argument, and it is a copy of that pointer's value which is seen
inside the function, and can be modified. The memory it points at is the
same as the memory pointed at by the corresponding argument.