Arguments or parameters? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Arguments are what you have when you're invoking a subroutine. Parameters are what you are accessing inside the subroutine.

argle(foo, bar);

foo and bar are arguments.

public static void main(final String[] args) {
    args.length;
}

args is a parameter.

Answer 2

In most cases, a procedure needs some information about the circumstances in which it has been called. A procedure that performs repeated or shared tasks uses different information for each call. This information consists of variables, constants, and expressions that you pass to the procedure when you call it.

To communicate this information to the procedure, the procedure defines a parameter, and the calling code passes an argument to that parameter. You can think of the parameter as a parking place and the argument as an automobile. Just as different automobiles can park in the parking place at different times, the calling code can pass a different argument to the same parameter each time it calls the procedure.

Parameters

A parameter represents a value that the procedure expects you to pass when you call it. The procedure's declaration defines its parameters.

When you define a Function or Sub procedure, you specify a parameter list in parentheses immediately following the procedure name. For each parameter, you specify a name, a data type, and a passing mechanism (ByVal or ByRef). You can also indicate that a parameter is optional, meaning the calling code does not have to pass a value for it.

The name of each parameter serves as a local variable within the procedure. You use the parameter name the same way you use any other variable.

Arguments

An argument represents the value you pass to a procedure parameter when you call the procedure. The calling code supplies the arguments when it calls the procedure.

When you call a Function or Sub procedure, you include an argument list in parentheses immediately following the procedure name. Each argument corresponds to the parameter in the same position in the list.

In contrast to parameter definition, arguments do not have names. Each argument is an expression, which can contain zero or more variables, constants, and literals. The data type of the evaluated expression should normally match the data type defined for the corresponding parameter, and in any case it must be convertible to the parameter type.

Answer 3

A variable is a storage location and an associated symbolic name (an identifier) which contains data, a value.

A parameter is a variable passed to a function.

An argument is data (a value) passed to a function.

$variable = 'data/value';

function first($variable){ ... }

function second('data/value'){ ... }
function third(16){ ... }

In function first we are passing a parameter.

In function second and third we are passing arguments.

Answer 4

Although Wikipedia is hardly an authoritative source, it does a decent job of explaining the terms.

I guess you could say that parameters are to arguments what classes are to instances of objects...

Answer 5

Simply there is no major differences. If we go deeply inside this we can identify the diff.Mainly we know that Argument/Parameter/signature all are same.

Basically Parameter defines the type of Data we are passing.Where as the Argument defines the actual data/variable we are passing.

Parameter Example :-

int add(int a,int b){ //Here a and be both can treated as Parameter
 return a+b;
}

Argument Example :-

int return_result=add(3,4); // Here 3 and 4 both can treated as Argument

or

int x=3,y=4;
int return_result=add(x,y);// Here x and y both can treated as Argument

Answer 6

There is nice section in parameter Wikipedia article about this subject.

In short -- parameter is the formal name defined by function and argument is actual value (like 5) or thing (like variable) passed into function.