Comments on Rules for function submissions
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Rules for function submissions
What are our rules for function submission? What constitutes a function, and what makes a submission valid? Language agnostic answers are allowed.
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Function parameters should not be allowed to be used in place of a return value.
Reasons:
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Terms like return value and function result are explicitly specified as a specific, formal language item in most languages.
Therefore, interpreting a challenge asking for a return value as "return through parameter" is creating a local code golf dialect of the language (as was done on Stack Exchange).
New users of the site should not need to study local, site-specific dialects of programming languages in order to contribute. It's bad enough to allow non-standard extensions.
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Not all languages support pass by reference.
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Some languages separate subroutines (do not return a value) from functions (returns a value).
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Assuming that things like memory allocation are handled by the caller might give contributions an unfair advantage.
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