Beginning C# 7 Programming with Visual Studio 2017

6Functions

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

• Defining and using simple functions that don't accept or return any data
• Transferring data to and from functions
• Working with variable scope
• Using command‐line arguments with the Main() function
• Supplying functions as members of struct types
• Using function overloading
• Using delegates

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found on this book's webpage on Wrox.com on the Download Code tab. The code can also be found at http://github.com/benperk/BeginningCSharp7. The code is in the Chapter06 folder and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

All the code you have seen so far has taken the form of a single block, perhaps with some looping to repeat lines of code, and branching to execute statements conditionally. Performing an operation on your data has meant placing the code required right where you want it to work.

This kind of code structure is limited. Often, some tasks—such as finding the highest value in an array, for example—might need to be performed at several points in a program. You can place identical (or nearly identical) sections of code in your application whenever necessary, but this has its own problems. Changing even one minor detail concerning a common task (to correct a code error, for example) can require changes to multiple sections of code, which can be spread throughout the application. Missing one of these can have dramatic consequences and ...