Re: Why Oracle is st00pid:

"horwinkle" <whaddayamean_at_whaddayamean.com> wrote in message news:<%eKQ9.9733$us1.3379_at_news.bellsouth.net>...
> Tim X wrote:
> > sureucanspaamme_at_hotmail.com (Johnny Random) writes:
> >
> > 1. Name me a language where functions return more than one value?
> > C - no, C++ - no, Pascal - no, Perl - no, Java - no, Lisp - no.
> > I cannot think of any.
> >
> PERL ... YES! You can return a complete list.

As can C (either via an array, a structure or by passing values by reference),
as can C++ (as C but also objects)
(haven't touched pascal for 20 years so am a bit hazy) perl (as you said, this treats lists pretty much as a native data type and they can have lots done with them)
Java (arrays and objects and probably more, I'm still quite new to this one)
Lisp (this goes back about 25 years, but I thik so) Assembler (you can pretty much whatever you like with this one as long as you have the structure, control and patience!)

The distinction is that whilst the functions return many values, in most cases (perl is an exception) they do not "evaluate" to that value.
By that I mean that you can only do "print fn(x,y,z)" on the evaluated value, even though x, y and z might now contain new values. Received on Tue Jan 07 2003 - 10:02:28 CET