Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation

12.11 Chapter Summary

Programming languages support a variety of parameter-passing mechanisms. The pass-by-value and pass-by-reference parameter-passing mechanisms are widely supported in languages. Binding and assignment are different concepts. A binding is an association between an identifier and an immutable expressed value; an assignment is a mutation of the expressed value stored in a memory cell. References refer to memory cells or variables to which expressed values can be assigned; they refer to variables whose values are mutable. Most parameter-passing mechanisms, except for lazy evaluation, differ in either the direction (e.g., in, out, or in-out) or the content (e.g., value or address), or both, of the information that flows to and ...