Talk:Call a function

Duplication?

I'm fairly certain that this is duplicative of a number of tasks or parts of other taks. If the distinction is just to show calling and not the mechanism, I suggest the requirement include referencing the other tasks or omits as appropriate. --Dgamey 03:26, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Some languages have different mechanisms for functions and subroutines, and the Function definition task did not consider calling a function. This task provides a centralized comparative reference for all of the calling mechanisms. I know other tasks may utilized mechanisms that are used in other tasks, but this does not necessarily help with comparison of sub methods, because different approaches to a solution may have been used, so the sub methods are not present in the solution, even though they are supported by the language. To find out how to call a function, we really need a task that demonstrates this. Markhobley 14:23, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Huh?

In some languages, at least, there are multiple ways of doing things -- especially something so basic as "calling a function". Is the intent of this task to show typical use? Or is it a much larger task of showing various or all possible ways of accomplishing these tasks? Also, what is a "function" if the language spec does not use the term -- is it "anything that can be said to be equivalent to the mathematical concept of a function?" (or some constrained version of that -- if so, what kind of constraints are we talking about here?) or is it "anything that can be said to be equivalent to language X's concept of a function?" (if so, what is X?) or is it some other concept which is independent of language X? --Rdm 14:51, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

It's a larger task that shows multiple ways of doing things Markhobley 15:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping for a little more than that. For example: Calling a function that requires no arguments is a confusing concept, mathematically. Is a constant a "function that requires no arguments"? Is an operation which produces different results at different times really a function that requires no arguments? Is it even a function? (In some languages it would not be a function, according to the concepts laid out in the documentation for those languages.) --Rdm 18:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)