2.7 Function Calls
We'll have much more to say about functions in a later chapter, but for now let's just look at how they're called. (To review: what a function is is a piece of code, written by you or by someone else, which performs some useful, compartmentalizable task.) You call a function by mentioning its name followed by a pair of parentheses. If the function takes any arguments, you place the arguments between the parentheses, separated by commas. These are all function calls:
printf("Hello, world!\n")
printf("%d\n", i)
sqrt(144.)
getchar()
The arguments to a function can be arbitrary expressions. Therefore, you don't have to say things like
int sum = a + b + c;
printf("sum = %d\n", sum);
if you don't want to; you can instead collapse it to
printf("sum = %d\n", a + b + c);
Many functions return values, and when they do, you can embed calls to these functions within larger expressions:
c = sqrt(a * a + b * b)
x = r * cos(theta)
i = f1(f2(j))
The first expression squares a and b, computes the square root of the sum of the squares, and assigns the result to c. (In other words, it computes a * a + b * b, passes that number to the sqrt function, and assigns sqrt's return value to c.) The second expression passes the value of the variable theta to the cos (cosine) function, multiplies the result by r, and assigns the result to x. The third expression passes the value of the variable j to the function f2, passes the return value of f2 immediately to the function f1, and finally assigns f1's return value to the variable i.
