Creating and Using Functions

The syntax to define a function starts with the function header, which consists of the following:

function_name can be anything that your heart desires, are long as it doesn’t start with a number or any of the special keywords we use in C.

parameters are optional (represented by the square brackets []). Because it’s optional, it means that we can define 0 or more of these parameters. How do parameters usually look like? They look like new variables, each one separated by a comma! For example, for a function called print_error that accepts an integer representing the error number, the parameter (and overall header) would look like this:

void print_error(int error);
//               ^ declaring a variable called `error` that is of type `int`

However, a function header doesn’t do anything… Remember that the function header is like a contract we programmers define to tell C what the function should return and what it should accept, so that we don’t use it incorrectly. (You don’t want the sqrt to return nothing because it should return a double!)

To execute some code, we need the function body, which is the code that we wrap with the curly braces after a function header.

void print_error(int error) // <---- We got rid of the semicolon here, why?
{
  // I'm in the function body!
}

If you took a look at the previous code block, you will see that we removed the semicolon (;) from the function header and added opening { and closing } curly braces to represent the function body, where we can execute the function code (whatever that may be). Remember that a semicolon represents the end of a statement, so if we add it next to a function, it means that the function has no body and, therefore, no code to execute (so why even have a function header? More on that as it develops…).

Invoke-ing or call-ing a function.

Now that we defined the print_error function, which is a void function (meaning that it returns nothing, the void of emptiness), we can call it to run the code. Wait, what? If I write a function, doesn’t it run automatically? Simply put, no.

void print_one(void)
{
  printf("I'm in print_one\n");
}

void print_two(void)
{
  printf("I'm in print_two\n");
}

int main(void)
{
  printf("I'm in main!\n");

  return 0;
}

In C, the only program that is executed (run) by default is main function, so we will only see

if we run the program. To execute the code from the other two functions, we have to call them - let’s do that!

Here, <function_name> is the name of the function we defined earlier. In this example, we have two functions called print_one and print_two.

arguments are the values we pass into the function. Notice that they are not called parameters. We call parameters the variables on a function definition and arguments the variables that we pass into that function. Since both our functions accept void, we can call these functions with an empty parenthesis:

void print_one(void)
{
  printf("I'm in print_one\n");
}

void print_two(void)
{
  printf("I'm in print_two\n");
}

int main(void)
{
  printf("I'm in main!\n");
  print_one();
  print_two();

  return 0;
}

int sum(int num1, int num2)
{
  return num1 + num2;
}

int main(void)
{
  int sum_of_numbers;

  sum(1, 1);

  printf("sum_of_numbers should be 2. Its value is, %d\n", sum_of_numbers);

  return 0;
}

int sum(int num1, num2)
{
  return num1 + num2;
}

int main(void)
{
  int sum_of_numbers = sum(1, 1);

  printf("sum_of_numbers should be 2. Its value is, %d\n", sum_of_numbers);

  return 0;
}

int sum(int num1, int num2, int result)
{
  result = num1 + num2;

  return 0;
}

int main(void)
{
  int result;

  sum(1, 1, result);

  printf("result should be 2. Its value is: %d\n", result);
}

Creating and Using Functions

Define-ing a function.

Invoke-ing or call-ing a function.