[tex-k] Error in "METAFONT: The Program"

[Karl Berry]

Hi Rino,

    [p.120, section 266]
    “This procedure returns a pointer…” should be
    “This function returns a pointer…”

I take your point, but after consulting with others, I feel that
Prof. Knuth is using the word "procedure" informally here (not formatted
in bold, after all). There is at least one other places in mf.web where
he explicitly says "procedure returns ..." (section 239), and plenty of
other places where he uses "procedure", "routine", and "subroutine" to
refer to functions, all interchangeably as far as I can tell. If there
was only one place where he used "procedure" to refer to a Pascal
function, then maybe, but it's not.  Merely because "procedure" happens
to be the Pascal keyword doesn't make it an error.

Nevertheless, thanks for the report. --best, karl.