Re: A simple swap function
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg2145] Re: A simple swap function
- From: rmarimon at leland.stanford.edu (Ricardo Marimon)
- Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 01:58:34 -0400
- Organization: Stanford University
In article <44qj8g$s22 at ralph.vnet.net>, valentin at wam.umd.edu (William F. Campbell) wrote: > I think I must be missing something straightforward. I want a function > to swap the values of 2 lists. I defined ab={a,b}, and ba={b,a}, and > swap[v1_,v2_]:=Module[{temp=v1},v1=v2;v2=temp;], and I get an Iteration > limit exceeded error. When I look at ab, it looks like {Hold[a],Hold[b]} > (or maybe {Hold[b],Hold[a], I don't remember), and ba looks opposite. When > I tried to use the same function on numbers, it didn't work either. What's > wrong with what I'm doing, and how can I do what I want to do? If I remember correctly, the parameters in Mathematica are passed by value only. Any attempt to change the value of a parameter will not work, since you would be changing the value of the paramater and not the value of the variable you passes to the function... You could try writting {v1, v2} = {v2, v1} this will do the swap you intend and is very simple... - Ricardo Marimon rmarimon at leland.stanford.edu