Default values for function?

[Jay]

Hey all, I've google'd and searched all this forum, and now I'm finally desperate and posting. Is there any way in Turing to have default values for a function's parameters? I can't find anything that points one way or the other, but I figure if I haven't found anything by now there's probably no way. I also wanted to use function overloading, but found a thread that confirms that that's not possible.

Thanks.

[Tony]

there's a way to fake function overload in Turing. You'd have to use pointers to functions and when you want to overload something, just change the pointer to a new function. Should work.

As for default values : there're two approaches to the problem.

1) make all of arguments be string, and if NULL ("") is passed, you make it a default value instead. For integers and floats you can use strint() and strreal().

Turing:

function foo (bar : string) : string     if bar not= "" then         result bar     else         result "default"     end if end foo put foo ("bar") put foo ("")

2) Might be a more interesting approach: accepting an array of arguments. The size will be flexable, it is actually possible to incorporate multiple constructors for the same function.. (hardcoded overloading?)

Turing:

function foo (bar : array 0 .. * of string) : string     var out : array 0 .. 4 of string := init ("1", "2", "3", "4", "5")     var answer : string := ""     if upper (bar) not= 0 then %atleast one argument has been passed         for i : 0 .. upper (bar)             out (i) := bar (i)         end for     end if     for i : 0 .. upper (out)         answer += out (i) + " :: "     end for     result answer end foo var myArguments1 : array 0 .. 0 of string := init ("") put foo (myArguments1) var myArguments2 : array 0 .. 1 of string := init ("Tony", "Dan") put foo (myArguments2) var myArguments3 : array 0 .. 4 of string := init ("Tony", "Dan", "Martin", "compsci", "Ruby") put foo (myArguments3)

[Jay]

Thanks for the help.