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Argument Association

  The actual arguments of the function reference or CALL statement become associated with the corresponding dummy arguments of the FUNCTION or SUBROUTINE statement. The main rules are as follows:

Because program units are compiled independently, it is difficult for the compiler to check for mismatches in actual and dummy argument lists. Although mismatches could, in principle, be detected by the linker, this rarely seems to happen in practice. Errors, particularly mismatches of data type or array bounds, are especially easy to make but hard to detect. Sometimes the only indication is that the program produces the wrong answer. This shows how important it is to check procedure interfaces.


next up previous contents index
Next: Duplicate Arguments Up: Arguments of External Procedures Previous: Arguments of External Procedures
Helen Rowlands
8/27/1998