Objectives

More on Functions:  This topic should allow students to

 Recognise the need for and write functions
Reference Parameters that take by-reference parameters.
Procedures  Write functions that do not return a value
(aka void functions, or procedures)
1E3  Choose between functions and procedures.
Topic 10  Read Chapter 7 of the textbook.

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A void function in payroll

void functions
 Our functions till now returned a single
value.
 Some sub-tasks don’t return anything
 E.g. the task of printing output
 These are implemented as void functions
in C++
 void print_results (int StID,
double grade);
program
 In the current draft of the “functions”
version of the payroll program (see next
slide) there is the line
 write_pay_details (employee_ID,
gross_pay, tax_due, net_pay)
 write_pay_details () is being called for its
effect, not to return a value.

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1
 Body of payrollFNS.cpp
10 More on Functions
Side-effects
 Proper functions (i.e. non-void ones)
should not have any side-effects.
 Functions should be called for the value
they return only.
 If a function has side effects
 E.g. printing, reading, updating a value
 then it won’t be as broadly useful and
could be confusing
10 More on Functions
Functions and Procedures
 Note that in computer science in general
 “function” means a sub-task that returns a single
value
 reflecting the mathematical meaning of function
 “procedure” is the term used for sub-tasks that
do something rather than returning something.
 C++ used the word function for all sub-tasks.
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Reference parameters
 Consider the read_details() function which
we need for payrollFNS.cpp
 It returns nothing. It prints nothing.
What’s it supposed to do?
 To provide values for the variables
num_hours, hourly_rate, tax_credit in the
main program.
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2
 WRONG definition of
read_details ()
 void read_details (int
num_hours, double hourly_rate,
double tax_credit) {
… whatever num_hours happens to be at that time.
cin >> num_hours;
… read_details function is initialised to 0, and then cin
}
 This won’t change the value of the main
program’s variable num_hours.
10 More on Functions
Call-by-reference parameters
 We need a way to pass the address of a
variable to the read_details () function.
 We want the function to be able to access
and update the place where num_hours is
stored by the main program.
 So we need to pass in a reference to the
variable num_hours.
 This is call-by-reference.
10 More on Functions
Call-by-value parameters
 Up to now, our parameters are call-by-value
 The value of the argument is passed in.
 Read_details (num_hours, … ) will pass in 0 or
 The parameter variable num_hours inside
gives it another value.
 But the main num_hours variable is not affected.
 See lecture for details.
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Call-by-reference syntax
 The function declaration should be
void read_details (int& hrs, ….){
 The & says “address of” or “reference to”
 int& hrs can be read as “hrs is a reference to
an integer variable”.
 read_details (num_hours, …); passes a
reference to the variable num_hours in to the
function,
 Inside the function, this parameter is called hrs
 cin >> hrs; will update the place referenced
by hrs, which in this case is num_hours.
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3
 Which to use
 If you want a function to change the value of a
variable it must be a call-by-reference parameter
i.e. use &
 If the function only needs the value of the
parameter don’t use &
 it’s confusing - the reader will expect the function to
change the value
 and dangerous - the function may inadvertently
change the value of a main program variable.
Clean living!!
 Functions that return a value should have
no other effect
 Including they should not update reference
parameters.
 If your function needs to return multiple
values use reference parameters for all of
them and make it a void function.
 This is recommended practice, not
absolute.

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Exercises
 We can now complete the “functions”
version of the payroll program.
 Write a function to swap the values of two
integer variables.
 Write a function to order the values of two
integer variables, so that x <= y.

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