5.2.3. Functions

Spicy’s language allows to define custom functions just like most other languages. The generic syntax for defining a function with is N parameters is:

[public] function NAME(NAME_1: TYPE_1, ..., NAME_N: TYPE_N) [: RETURN_TYPE ] {
    ... BODY ...
}

A public function will be accessible from other modules . If the return type is skipped, it’s implicitly taken as void, i.e., the function will not return anything. If a function has return type other than void, all paths through the body must end in a return returning a corresponding value.

A parameter specification can be postfixed with a default value: NAME: TYPE = DEFAULT. Callers may then omit that parameter.

By default, by parameters are passed by constant reference and hence remain read-only inside the function’s body. To make a parameter modifiable, with any changes becoming visible to the caller, a parameter can be prefixed with inout:

module Test;

global s = "1";

function foo(inout x: string) {
    x = "2";
}

print s;
foo(s);
print s;

1
2

Note

When calling a function with an inout parameter, the type of the corresponding argument must match the type of the parameter exactly. For example, while normally you can pass an integer of type uint8 to to a parameter of type uint64, that doesn’t work if the parameter is inout.

Spicy has couple more function-like constructs (Unit Hooks and Unit Parameters) that use the same conventions for parameter passing.