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A higher-order function is a function that takes a function as an argument or returns one as a result. This is commonly used to customize the behavior of a generically defined function, often a looping construct or recursion scheme. Anonymous functions are a convenient way to specify such function arguments. The following examples are in Python 3.
A simple example of a higher-ordered function is the map function, which takes, as its arguments, a function and a list, and returns the list formed by applying the function to each member of the list. For a language to support map, it must support passing a function as an argument.
In Python, functions are first-class objects that can be created and passed around dynamically. Python's limited support for anonymous functions is the lambda construct. An example is the anonymous function which squares its input, called with the argument of 5:
In theoretical computer science, currying provides a way to study functions with multiple arguments in very simple theoretical models, such as the lambda calculus, in which functions only take a single argument. Consider a function (,) taking two arguments, and having the type (), which should be understood to mean that x must have the type , y ...
The function Sum has two parameters, named addend1 and addend2. It adds the values passed into the parameters, and returns the result to the subroutine's caller (using a technique automatically supplied by the C compiler). The code which calls the Sum function might look like this:
A function definition starts with the name of the type of value that it returns or void to indicate that it does not return a value. This is followed by the function name, formal arguments in parentheses, and body lines in braces. In C++, a function declared in a class (as non-static) is called a member function or method.
A function call using named parameters differs from a regular function call in that the arguments are passed by associating each one with a parameter name, instead of providing an ordered list of arguments. For example, consider this Java or C# method call that doesn't use named parameters:
Methods on objects are functions attached to the object's class; the syntax instance. method (argument) is, for normal methods and functions, syntactic sugar for Class. method (instance, argument). Python methods have an explicit self parameter to access instance data , in contrast to the implicit self (or this ) in some other object-oriented ...