SYNTAX

Call by reference

&
&<lvalue>

DESCRIPTION

Call by reference can be used to have a function that passes more than one value to the caller without using arrays that have to be unpacked therein.

There is nothing special to declare in the calling function, you simply do an assignment to a parameter of the function. The caller has to pass references explicitely; this is done by prefixing an lvalue with &.

To pass a reference to an element of an array, you have to enclose the indexed lvalue in round brackets.

USAGE

void assign(mixed destination, mixed source) {
  destination = source;
}

void extract_number(int destination, string source) {
  sscanf(source, "%d", destination);
}

void test() {
  int i;
  float f;
  mixed *a;

  extract_number(&i, "42 palantirs");
  assign(&f, 3.141592653589793);
  assign(&a, ({ i, f }));
  assign(&(a[<0..<1]), ({1,2,3,"sink","x","y","x"}));
  assign(&(a[5][0]), 'w');
  assign(&(a[5][<1]), 'g');
  printf("%O", a));
}

({ /* sizeof() == 9 */
  42,
  3.14159,
  1,
  2,
  3,
  "wing",
  "x",
  "y",
  "x"
})