Chapter 6
Functions
Functions
are one of the fundamental building blocks in JavaScript. A function is a
JavaScript procedure—a set of statements that performs a specific
task. To use a function, you must first define it; then your script can
call it.
This
chapter contains the following sections:
Defining Functions
A function
definition consists of the function keyword, followed
by
-
-
The name of the function.
-
A list of arguments to the function, enclosed
in parentheses and separated by commas.
-
The JavaScript statements that define the
function, enclosed in curly braces, { }. The statements in a function
can include calls to other functions defined in the current
application.
For example,
the following code defines a simple function named square:
function square(number) {
return number * number;
}
The
function square takes one
argument, called number. The function
consists of one statement that indicates to return the argument of the
function multiplied by itself. The return statement
specifies the value returned by the function.
return number * number
All
parameters are passed to functions by value; the value is passed
to the function, but if the function changes the value of the
parameter, this change is not reflected globally or in the calling
function. However, if you pass an object as a parameter to a function
and the function changes the object's properties, that change is
visible outside the function, as shown in the following example:
function myFunc(theObject) {
theObject.make="Toyota"
}
mycar = {make:"Honda", model:"Accord", year:1998};
x=mycar.make; // returns Honda
myFunc(mycar); // pass object mycar to the
function
y=mycar.make; // returns Toyota (prop was
changed by the function)
A function
can be defined based on a condition. For example, given the following
function definition:
if
(num == 0)
{
function myFunc(theObject) {
theObject.make="Toyota"
}
}
the
myFunc
function is only defined if the variable num equals 0. If
num does not
equal 0, the function is not defined, and any attempt to execute it
will fail.
In
addition to defining functions as described here, you can also define
Function
objects, as described in "Function Object"
on page 106.
A
method is a function associated with an object. You'll learn
more about objects and methods in Chapter 7,
"Working with Objects."
A function
can also be defined inside an expression. This is called a function
expression. Typically such a function is anonymous; it does not have to
have a name. For example, the function square could have been defined
as:
const
square = function(number) {return number * number};
This is
convenient when passing a function as an argument to another function.
The following example shows the map function being defined and then
called with an anonymous function as its first parameter:
function map(f,a) {
var result=new Array;
for (var i = 0; i != a.length; i++)
result[i] = f(a[i]);
return result;
}
The call
map(function(x) {return x * x * x}, [0, 1, 2, 5,
10];
returns
[0, 1, 8, 125, 1000].
Calling Functions
Defining a
function does not execute it. Defining the function simply names the
function and specifies what to do when the function is called.
Calling the function actually performs the specified actions with
the indicated parameters. For example, if you define the function
square, you
could call it as follows.
square(5)
The
preceding statement calls the function with an argument of five. The
function executes its statements and returns the value twenty-five.
The
arguments of a function are not limited to strings and numbers. You can
pass whole objects to a function, too. The show_props function
(defined in "Objects and Properties" on
page 91) is an example of a function that takes an object as
an argument.
A function
can even be recursive, that is, it can call itself. For example, here
is a function that computes factorials:
function factorial(n) {
if ((n == 0) || (n == 1))
return 1
else {
var result = (n * factorial(n-1)
);
return result
}
}
You could
then compute the factorials of one through five as follows:
a=factorial(1) // returns 1
b=factorial(2) // returns 2
c=factorial(3) // returns 6
d=factorial(4) // returns 24
e=factorial(5) // returns 120
Using the arguments Array
The
arguments of a function are maintained in an array. Within a function,
you can address the arguments passed to it as follows:
arguments[i]
where
i is the
ordinal number of the argument, starting at zero. So, the first
argument passed to a function would be arguments[0]. The total
number of arguments is indicated by arguments.length.
Using the
arguments
array, you can call a function with more arguments than it is formally
declared to accept. This is often useful if you don't know in advance
how many arguments will be passed to the function. You can use
arguments.length to
determine the number of arguments actually passed to the function, and
then treat each argument using the arguments array.
For
example, consider a function that concatenates several strings. The
only formal argument for the function is a string that specifies the
characters that separate the items to concatenate. The function is
defined as follows:
function myConcat(separator) {
var result="" // initialize list
// iterate through arguments
for (var i=1; i<arguments.length; i++) {
result += arguments[i] +
separator
}
return result
}
You can
pass any number of arguments to this function, and it creates a list
using each argument as an item in the list.
//
returns "red, orange, blue, "
myConcat(", ","red","orange","blue")
//
returns "elephant; giraffe; lion; cheetah; "
myConcat("; ","elephant","giraffe","lion", "cheetah")
//
returns "sage. basil. oregano. pepper. parsley. "
myConcat(". ","sage","basil","oregano", "pepper", "parsley")
See the
Function
object in the Core
JavaScript Reference for more information.
JavaScript 1.3 and earlier versions.
The
arguments
array is a property of the Function object and can
be preceded by the function name, as follows:
functionName.arguments[i]
Predefined
Functions
JavaScript
has several top-level predefined functions:
-
-
eval
-
isFinite
-
isNaN
-
parseInt and
parseFloat
-
Number and
String
-
encodeURI, decodeURI,
encodeURIComponent, and decodeURIComponent (all available with
Javascript 1.5 and later).
The
following sections introduce these functions. See the Core
JavaScript Reference for detailed information on all of these
functions.
eval Function
The
eval function
evaluates a string of JavaScript code without reference to a particular
object. The syntax of eval is:
eval(expr)
where
expr is a
string to be evaluated.
If the
string represents an expression, eval evaluates the
expression. If the argument represents one or more JavaScript
statements, eval performs the
statements. Do not call eval to evaluate an
arithmetic expression; JavaScript evaluates arithmetic expressions
automatically.
isFinite Function
The
isFinite function evaluates an argument to determine whether it is a
finite number. The syntax of isFinite is:
isFinite(number)
where
number is the
number to evaluate.
If the
argument is NaN, positive infinity or
negative infinity, this method returns false, otherwise it
returns true.
The
following code checks client input to determine whether it is a finite
number.
if(isFinite(ClientInput) == true)
{
/* take specific steps */
}
isNaN Function
The
isNaN function
evaluates an argument to determine if it is "NaN" (not a number). The
syntax of isNaN is:
isNaN(testValue)
where
testValue is
the value you want to evaluate.
The
parseFloat and
parseInt
functions return "NaN" when they evaluate a value that is not a number.
isNaN returns
true if passed "NaN," and false otherwise.
The
following code evaluates floatValue to determine
if it is a number and then calls a procedure accordingly:
floatValue=parseFloat(toFloat)
if
(isNaN(floatValue)) {
notFloat()
} else {
isFloat()
}
parseInt and
parseFloat Functions
The two
"parse" functions, parseInt and
parseFloat,
return a numeric value when given a string as an argument.
The syntax
of parseFloat
is
parseFloat(str)
where
parseFloat
parses its argument, the string str, and attempts to
return a floating-point number. If it encounters a character other than
a sign (+ or -), a numeral (0-9), a decimal point, or an exponent, then
it returns the value up to that point and ignores that character and
all succeeding characters. If the first character cannot be converted
to a number, it returns "NaN" (not a number).
The syntax
of parseInt is
parseInt(str [, radix])
parseInt
parses its first argument, the string str, and attempts
to return an integer of the specified radix (base),
indicated by the second, optional argument, radix. For example,
a radix of ten indicates to convert to a decimal number, eight
octal, sixteen hexadecimal, and so on. For radixes above ten, the
letters of the alphabet indicate numerals greater than nine. For
example, for hexadecimal numbers (base 16), A through F are used.
If
parseInt
encounters a character that is not a numeral in the specified radix, it
ignores it and all succeeding characters and returns the integer value
parsed up to that point. If the first character cannot be converted to
a number in the specified radix, it returns "NaN." The
parseInt
function truncates the string to integer values.
Number and String Functions
The
Number and
String
functions let you convert an object to a number or a string. The syntax
of these functions is:
Number(objRef)
String(objRef)
where
objRef is an
object reference.
The
following example converts the Date object to a readable
string.
D =
new Date (430054663215)
// The following returns
// "Thu Aug 18 04:37:43 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) 1983"
x = String(D)
escape and unescape Functions
The
escape and
unescape
functions let you encode and decode strings. The escape function returns
the hexadecimal encoding of an argument in the ISO Latin character set.
The unescape
function returns the ASCII string for the specified hexadecimal
encoding value.
The syntax
of these functions is:
escape(string)
unescape(string)
These
functions are used primarily with server-side JavaScript to encode and
decode name/value pairs in URLs.
The
escape and
unescape
functions do not work properly for non-ASCII characters and have been
deprecated. In JavaScript 1.5 and later, use encodeURI,
decodeURI,
encodeURIComponent,
and decodeURIComponent.
Statements
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