Why arrays could not be passed by values to functions?

Question

What are the languages being used for embedded system? And why these languages has been chosen ?

Answer 1

The origin is historical. The problem is that the rule "arrays decay into pointers, when passed to a function" is simple. Copying arrays would be kind of complicated and not very clear, since the behavior would change for different parameters and different function declarations.

There could be 3 main reasons why arrays are passed as pointers in C instead of by value.

1. C is evolved from B and BCPL, where arrays were actually implemented as a pointer to the array data
2. Efficiency
3. No Size information (for dynamically allocated arrays)allocated arrays)