Scala Functional Programming Patterns

Call by name

Typically, parameters are passed by value are by-value that is the value of the parameter is determined before it gets passed to the function. In the REPL session here, we have two functions, g and f.

We pass the value of calling getValue() to f and g:

scala> var k = 0 
k: Int = 0 
scala> def getVal() = { 
     |   k += 1 
     |   k 
     | } 
getVal: ()Int 
scala> def g(i: Int) = { 
     |   println(s"${i}") 
     |   println(s"${i}") 
     |   println(s"${i}") 
     | } 
g: (i: Int)Unit 

scala> g(getVal())
1 
1 
1 

Refer to the following figure:

Figure 4.6: Call By Value

The three println statements in g() print the same value, 1:

scala> def f(i: => Int) = {  
 | println(s"${i}") ...