Functions

Functions

Functions are similar to variables in that you can assign a name to a piece of code
When invoked, they are evaluated They can have zero to many inputs, and an optional output
There are two important concepts to remember about functions:

• How to define them
• How to call/invoke them

# Function definition
def square(x):
  return x * x

# Function invocation
print square(3)

# OR
input = 3
input_squared = square(input)
print input_squared

In python, indentation is very important
Other languages, like C/C++ or Java use curly braces '{}' to denote when functions start and end

int square(int x) {
    return x * x;
}

In python, the function definition lasts as long as you keep the line indented

Functions can return a different type than their arguments

def number_to_string(in):
    return '%s' % in