Bifalgorithm post · Computer science one · Quadratic Roots

How can the return value communicate errors when roots are passed by reference?

How can the return value communicate errors when roots are passed by reference? (Computer science one · Quadratic Roots) — "We also note that the return value…

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The return value is available for communicating errors
The roots are returned through two pass-by-reference variables
Therefore, the function's return value is not needed for returning the roots
The return value can instead communicate errors to the calling function
Several inputs may be invalid
The roots could be complex values
The coefficient a could be zero
The pointers could be invalid because they point to NULL
The next chapter examines how different errors can be communicated and handled by the calling function

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How can the return value communicate errors when roots are passed by reference?

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Computer science one

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"We also note that the return value in this case is unused since we are “returning” the root values in the two pass-by-reference variables. This frees up the return value to be used to communicate errors to the calling function. Recall that there could be several “bad” inputs to this function. The roots could be complex values, the coefficient a could be zero, etc. And now that we are dealing with pointers, the pointers could be invalid (point to NULL). In the next chapter, we examine how we can use the return value to communicate different errors to the calling function, letting it handle those errors."

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