Re: "procedure" vs. "function"

[Michael Hendry]

> On 18 Apr 2015, at 11:15, Richard Shann <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 2015-04-18 at 11:51 +0200, Urs Liska wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I just stumbled over a terminology issue: are "procedure" and "function" 
>> synonyms in Scheme or do they refer to different things?
> The Guile reference manual uses the term procedure
>> 
>> From my earliest experiences with programming I'd recall the difference 
>> to be that functions return a value and procedures don't.
> 
> that was a common terminological distinction for some programming
> languages at one time apparently.

I think it was Pascal that introduced a distinction between a Procedure (which 
does something without returning a value) and a Function (which does something 
AND returns a value).

In C there are only Functions, but in many instances the returned value isn’t 
of any interest and is ignored, so they’re Procedures in all but name.

If forced to choose, I like the Pascal way - it makes it quite clear that you 
intend no value to be returned by a Procedure, and that if you write a Function 
you really do want a result.

Horses for courses, I suppose!

Michael

> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> 
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