Functional Programming in Scala

Chapter 14. Local effects and mutable state

In the first chapter of this book, we introduced the concept of referential transparency, setting the premise for purely functional programming. We declared that pure functions can’t mutate data in place or interact with the external world. In chapter 13, we learned that this isn’t exactly true. We can write purely functional and compositional programs that describe interactions with the outside world. These programs are unaware that they can be interpreted with an evaluator that has an effect on the world.

In this chapter we’ll develop a more mature concept of referential transparency. We’ll consider the idea that effects can occur locally inside an expression, and that we can guarantee that no other ...