Writing Functions

Often you’ll want to use some portion of code to do a similar task multiple times. Rather than putting that code in your program at multiple places, you can put it in a function and reuse it!

The function

You might have some code that shows your name on the screen:

basic.showString("My name is: ")
basic.pause(300)
basic.showString("Super Coder")

If you want to display your name from multiple places in your program, you need to repeat these three blocks at each place. This example displays your name two times by using the same three blocks of code twice:

// Countdown to show my name
let count = 10
while (count > 0) {
    basic.showNumber(count)
    count -= 1
}
// show my name now...
basic.showString("My name is: ")
basic.pause(300)
basic.showString("Super Coder")// wait 2 seconds and show my name again
basic.pause(2000)
// show my name again...
basic.showString("My name is: ")
basic.pause(300)
basic.showString("Super Coder")

With a function you can put all of the code for showing your name in just one place and reuse it by calling the function. Let’s give it a try!

In the Blocks editor, go over to the Toolbox and click on Advanced. Some more block categories should appear and one of them is ||functions:Functions||. Click on ||functions:Functions|| and press the Make a Function button. Name the function as "showMyName" and click OK. Add in the three blocks used to display your name. Go back to ||functions:Functions|| and pull out ||functions:call function showMyName|| and put it into ||basic:on start||.

function showMyName() {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString("Super Coder")
}

showMyName()

You now have a function that shows your name and the code inside it is run by when the function is called using its name. Switch over to the JavaScript editor to look at your function’s code:

function showMyName() {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString("Super Coder")
}

showMyName()

In JavaScript, a function uses the function statement, it has a name, like showMyName, and the code for showing your name is inside brackets { and }. Code that is put inside the function, between the brackets, is called the body of the function. To use the function, you call it. This means that you use the function name at some place in the program to actually run the code inside the function.

Here, the program to display your name twice now uses the showMyName function instead of repeating the same three blocks of display code:

// A function to show my name
function showMyName() {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString("Super Coder")
}

// Countdown to show my name
let count = 10
while (count > 0) {
    basic.showNumber(count)
    count -= 1
}
// show my name now...
showMyName()
// wait 2 seconds and show my name again
basic.pause(2000)
// show my name again...
showMyName()

You see that we used, or called, the function showMyName two times and didn’t need to use those blocks to display your name over again.

Function parameter

You can see that a function is really useful when you want to reuse some code, especially if it’s a lot of code! But wait, functions are even more powerful when you can send them some information to work with!

The showMyName function would really be awesome if it could display anyone’s name. So, how can we make it do that? Well, let’s use a parameter. A parameter is like a variable but it’s a special variable only for the function. It allows your program to send, or pass, a value to the function. Just like a variable, the parameter has a type for the value passed in it. To use a parmeter with a function, we need to work with its code in the JavaScript editor since using a parameter makes the function too complex to be a block.

Go over to the JavaScript editor and change the function’s name from showMyName to just showName. Give it a parameter to display anyone’s name by inserting name: string in between the ( ) after the function name.

// A function to show anyone's name
function showName(name: string) {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString(name)
}

The parameter for showName has the name of, well, name of course. The parameter has a type of string so it can have the text of anyone’s name. The function is used, or called, with this new name and the text for someone’s name is passed to it inside the function’s parentheses ( and ).

Inside the function, the parameter is used with basic.showString(name). The text value in the parameter will display on the screen rather than the actual, or literal text of someone’s name like before. This is how a name is passed to and used by this function. Now that the function has its new, extra power, let’s use it! Add the extra lines of code shown here:

// my friend's name
let friendName = "Ace Debugger"

// A function to show anyone's name
function showName(name: string) {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString(name)
}

// show my name...
showName("Super Coder")
// wait 2 seconds and show my friend's name
basic.pause(2000)
// show my friend's name...
showName(friendName)

Like before, we used the function two times except now we are sending the names to the function. The first call to showName uses a literal text string "Super Coder" as the value for the name parameter. Since the parameter is a string, we can also send a value from another string variable to the function. This is done when friendName is passed to showName.

Remember, since your function now uses a parameter, it’s too complicated to convert into a block. So, a grey block is shown for it when you switch over to Blocks view.

// A function to show anyone's name
function showName(name: string) {
    basic.showString("My name is: ")
    basic.pause(300)
    basic.showString(name)
}

// show my name...
showName("Super Coder")

Return value

Now you probably think that functions can’t possibly be anymore awesome, right? Well, they get better still. A function can give you back a value after it finishes doing it’s work. How amazing is that? This is called a return value which is the result of some work or computation the function did. Not all functions have or need a return value. The function for showing a name just displayed it on the screen. It didn’t need to give your program back any result. You can make functions though that work on some data and provide you with a result.

As an example, you might want to know what the total for a series of numbers is, starting from 1 to 100. This could be calculated in a loop:

let sum = 0
for (let i = 0; i <= 100 - 1; i++) {
    sum += i + 1
}
basic.showNumber(sum)

A better way to do this is to make a function that will add up the numbers. We could even give it a parameter so the maximum number is passed in and not limited to just 100. In the JavaScript editor we can make a function to do this:

function seriesSum(n: number) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
        sum += i
    }
    basic.showNumber(sum)
}

seriesSum(100)
basic.pause(2000)
seriesSum(25)

What if you didn’t want to show the series total but wanted to use the value somewhere else in the program? We can get the number by adding a return value to the function.

function seriesSum(n: number) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
        sum += i
    }
    return sum
}

This is done with the return statement along with the value to return. The return value could be a literal value such as 1, or a variable like sum. We can now use the return value from seriesSum in other parts of the program.

let total = 0

function seriesSum(n: number) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
        sum += i
    }
    return sum
}

total = seriesSum(100)
basic.showNumber(total)

Let’s use the function multiple times in different ways. Copy this code into the JavaScript editor and watch the values from the different uses of seriesSum appear on the screen.

let total = 0

function seriesSum(n: number) {
    let sum = 0;
    for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
        sum += i
    }
    return sum
}

// add ten to the sum
total = seriesSum(100) + 10
basic.showNumber(total)
basic.pause(2000)
// add two sums together
total = seriesSum(100) + seriesSum(25)
basic.showNumber(total)
basic.pause(2000)
// use the sum of the last series as the maximum
total = seriesSum(total)
basic.showNumber(total)
basic.pause(2000)
// use the return code of the function as a parameter
basic.showNumber(seriesSum(100))

Your getting the idea that functions are really useful and quite versatile in what they can do and how you can use them!

Functions and code changes

One real advantage to using functions is to limit side-effects when modifying your code. You might realize that the code inside the seriesSum function could be replaced with a simple math formula that calculates the sum in one operation. The entire for loop can be replaced to make the function body really simple:

function seriesSum(n: number) {
    return (n * (n + 1)) / 2
}

If a program wasn’t using a function to calculate the series sum and you wanted to make this change, you would need to find every place in the program that had this for loop. That really increases both the work you have to do and the chances of making errors in your code. By using a function, a code change is just in one place and the rest of your program doesn’t need to be changed. That helps limit where any new errors or strange behaviors might happen.