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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:
Parameters appear in procedure definitions; arguments appear in procedure calls. In the function definition f(x) = x*x the variable x is a parameter; in the function call f(2) the value 2 is the argument of the function. Loosely, a parameter is a type, and an argument is an instance.
Notice that the type of the result can be regarded as everything past the first supplied argument. This is a consequence of currying, which is made possible by Haskell's support for first-class functions; this function requires two inputs where one argument is supplied and the function is "curried" to produce a function for the argument not supplied.
A built-in function, or builtin function, or intrinsic function, is a function for which the compiler generates code at compile time or provides in a way other than for other functions. [23] A built-in function does not need to be defined like other functions since it is built in to the programming language. [24]
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.
Syntax highlighting and indent style are often used to aid programmers in recognizing elements of source code. This Python code uses color-coded highlighting. In computer science, the syntax of a computer language is the rules that define the combinations of symbols that are considered to be correctly structured statements or expressions in ...
It is a common pattern in software testing to send values through test functions and check for correct output. In many cases, in order to thoroughly test functionalities, one needs to test multiple sets of input/output, and writing such cases separately would cause duplicate code as most of the actions would remain the same, only differing in input/output values.
The number of arguments that a function takes is called the arity of the function. A function that takes a single argument as input, such as () =, is called a unary function. A function of two or more variables is considered to have a domain consisting of ordered pairs or tuples of argument values. The argument of a circular function is an angle.