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antonvslast Tuesday at 2:47 PM1 replyview on HN

> referring to passed values as distinct from received values.

That’s not the distinction being made by those terms.

“Parameter” refers to a named variable in a function definition.

“Argument” refers to an actual value that’s passed to a function when it’s called.

It’s exactly the same as the distinction between variables and values (which you probably see the use for), just applied to the special cases of function signatures and function calls.

(As an aside, in the lambda calculus this relationship becomes a perfect equivalence: all variables are parameters and all values are arguments.)


Replies

MangoToupelast Tuesday at 3:52 PM

Well, I certainly would not interpret the terms that way, but you do you.

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