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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
In order to define the procedures and functions we will
need to lay some groundwork in the form of a few
definitions. These are important concepts, so pay close
attention.
Program Heading - This is the easiest part since it is only
one line, at least it has been in all of our
programs up to this point. It is simply the
PROGRAM line, and it never needs to be any more
involved than it has been up to this point in
TURBO Pascal.
Declaration Part - This is the part of the Pascal source
code in which all constants, variables, and user
defined auxiliary operations are defined. In
some of the programs we have examined, there have
been one or more VAR declarations. These are the
only components of the declaration part we have
used to this point. There are actually five
components in the declaration part, and the
procedures and functions are the fifth part. We
will cover the others in the next chapter.
Statement Part - This is the last part of any Pascal
program, and it is what we have been calling the
main program. It is one compound statement
bracketed with the reserved words BEGIN and END.
It is very important that you grasp the above
definitions because we will be referring to them constantly
during this chapter, and throughout the remainder of this
tutorial. With that introduction, lets go on to our first
Pascal program with a procedure in it, in fact, it will have
three procedures.
THE FIRST PROCEDURES
Load PROCED1 as your first working file and edit it.
You will notice that it doesn't look like anything you have
seen up to this point because it has PROCEDUREs in it. Lets
go back to our definitions from above. The first line is
the Program Heading which should pose no difficulty. The
Declaration Part begins with the VAR statement and continues
down through and including all three procedures. The last
five lines constitute the Statement Part. It may seem
strange that what appears to be executable Pascal
statements, and indeed they are executable, are contained in
the Declaration Part rather than the Statement Part. This
is because of the Pascal definition and it will make sense
when we have completed our study of the procedures and
functions.
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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
Continuing to examine PROCED1, we will make note of the
program itself, which is the Statement Part. The program,
due to the nature of Pascal, clearly tells us what it will
do, namely write a header, eight messages, and an ending.
The only problem we are faced with is, how will it write
these messages? This is where the Declaration Part is called
upon to define these operations in detail. The Declaration
Part contains three procedures which will completely define
what is to be done in the main program, or the Statement
Part. Hopefully you can begin to see why the procedures are
included in the Declaration Part of the Pascal program.
Now to examine one procedure in detail, namely the
first. The first statement we come to in the main program
is the one that says simply, "write_a_header" followed with
the usual end of statement, the semicolon. This is a simple
procedure call. When the compiler finds this it goes
looking for a predefined procedure which it can execute at
this point. If it finds one in the Declaration Part of the
program, it will execute that procedure. If it doesn't find
a user defined procedure, it will search the Pascal library
for a system defined procedure and execute it. The WRITE
and WRITELN statements are actually system defined
procedures, and you have already been using them quite a
bit, so procedures are not completely new to you. If it
doesn't find the procedure defined in either place, it will
generate an error message.
HOW TO CALL A PROCEDURE
To call a procedure, we simply need to state its name.
To define a simple procedure, we use the reserved word
PROCEDURE followed by its calling name, with a semicolon as
a terminator. Following the Procedure Heading, there is the
Declaration Part of the procedure followed by a body which
is nothing more than a compound statement bracketed by the
reserved words BEGIN and END. This is identical to the
Statement Part of the main program except that the procedure
ends with a semicolon instead of a period. Any valid Pascal
statements can be put between the BEGIN and END, and in
fact, there is no difference in what can be put in a
procedure and what can be put in the main program.
The program we are examining would be no different if we
would eliminate the first procedure completely and move the
WRITELN contained in it down to the Statement Part in place
of "write_a_header". If that is not clear, go back and
reread these last two paragraphs until it is.
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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
The next line will cause the procedure named
"write_a_message" to be called 8 times, each time writing a
line of output. Suffice it to say at this time that the
value of "count", as defined here, is available "globally",
meaning anywhere in the entire Pascal program. We will
define the variable availability shortly. Finally, the last
procedure call is made, causing the ending message to be
displayed, and the program execution is complete. Having
examined your first Pascal procedures, there is a fine point
that is obvious but could be easily overlooked. We
mentioned the unbroken rule of Pascal in an earlier chapter
and it must be followed here too. "Nothing can be used in
Pascal until it has been defined". The procedures must all
be defined ahead of any calls to them, once again
emphasizing the fact that they are part of the Declaration
Part of the program, not the Statement Part.
MORE PROCEDURE CALLS
Assuming you have run PROCED1 successfully and
understand its output, lets go on to PROCED2 and examine it.
To begin with, notice that there are three procedure calls
in the Statement Part of the program and each has an
additional term not contained in the calls in the last
program, namely the word "index" within brackets. This is
Pascals way of taking a variable parameter to the procedure
when it is called. You will notice that the variable
"index" is defined as an integer variable in the very top of
the Declaration Part. Therefore the procedure
"print_data_out" had better be expecting an integer variable
or we will have a type mismatch. In fact, observing the
procedure itself, indicates that it is indeed expecting an
integer variable but it prefers to call the variable
"puppy". Calling it something different poses no problem as
long as the main program doesn't try to call its variable
"puppy", and the procedure doesn't try to use the name
"index". Both are actually referring to the same piece of
data but they simply wish to refer to it by different names.
Notice that the next procedure is called with index as a
parameter and it prefers to call it by the name "cat".
Notice that in both cases, the procedures simply print out
the parameter passed to it, and each then try to modify the
value passed to it before passing it back. We will see that
one will be successful and the other will not.
We are in a loop in which "count" is incremented from 1
to 3 and we are not allowed to modify the loop variable so
we make a copy of the value and call it "index". We can
then modify "index" if we desire. The first procedure does
not contain a VAR in front of the passed parameter and
therefore the parameter passing is only one way. The system
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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
makes a copy of "index", and passes the copy to the
procedure which can do anything with it, of course using its
new name, "puppy", but when control returns to the main
program, the original value of "index" is still there. So
think of the passed parameter without the VAR as one way
parameter passing. This is a "call by value" because only
the value of the variable is passed to the procedure.
The second procedure has the reserved word VAR in front
of its desired name for the variable, namely "cat", so it
can not only receive the variable, it can modify it, and
return the modified value to the main program. A copy is not
made. The original variable named "index" is actually
passed to this procedure and it can modify it, therefore
communicating to the main program. A passed parameter with
a VAR in front of it is therefore a two way situation. This
is a "call by reference" since the reference to the original
variable is passed to the procedure.
When you run this program, you will find that the first
procedure is unable to get the value of 12 back to the main
program, but the second procedure does in fact succeed in
returning its value of 35 to the main program. Spend as
much time as you like studying this program until you fully
understand it. It should be noted that as many parameters
as desired can be passed to and from a procedure by simply
making a list separated by commas in the calls, and
separated by semicolons in the procedure.
For your own enlightenment, examine PROCED3 for an
example of a procedure call with more than one variable in
the call. Normally, you would group the three input values
together, but for purposes of illustration, they are
separated. Observe that the variable "fruit" is a two way
variable. When you are satisfied with the present
illustration, we will go on to study the scope of variables
using PROCED4.
A MULTIPLY DEFINED VARIABLE
If you will examine PROCED4, you will notice that the
variable "count" is defined twice, once in the main program
VAR block and once in the VAR block contained within the
procedure named "print_some_data". This is perfectly legal
and is within the Pascal definition.
The variable "index" is defined in the main program VAR
block and is valid anywhere within the entire Pascal
program, including the procedures. The variable "count" is
also defined in the main program VAR block and is also valid
anywhere within the entire Pascal program, except within the
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procedure where another variable is defined with the same
name "count". The two variables with the same name are in
fact, two completely different variables. If a third
variable was defined within the procedure, it would be
invisible to the main program, since it was defined at a
lower level than that of the main program. Any variable
defined in the main program or in any procedure is available
in any procedure that is within the scope of the defining
procedure. That last sentence seems confusing, but thinking
about it will clear it up. This is a difficult concept to
grasp but is very important.
PROCEDURES CALLING OTHER PROCEDURES
Load and examine PROCED5 to see an example of procedures
that call other procedures. Keep in mind that, "Nothing can
be used in Pascal until it has been previously defined", and
the order of procedures will be clear in this example.
Now that you have a good grasp of procedures, we need to
make another important point. Remember that any Pascal
program is made up of three parts, the Program Heading, the
Declaration Part, and the Statement Part. The Declaration
Part is composed of five unique components, four of which we
will discuss in detail in the next chapter, and the last
component, which is composed of some number of procedures
and functions. We will cover functions in the next example,
so for now simply accept the fact that it is like a
procedure. A procedure is also composed of three parts, a
Program Heading (which says "PROCEDURE"), a Declaration
Part, and a Statement Part. A procedure, by definition, is
therefore nothing more or less than another complete Pascal
program embedded within the main program, and any number of
procedures can be located in the Declaration Part of the
main program. These procedures are all in a line, one right
after another.
Since a procedure is defined like the main program, it
would seem to be possible to embed another procedure within
the declaration part of any procedure. This is perfectly
valid and is often done, but remember that the embedded
procedure can only be called by the procedure in which it is
embedded, not by the main program. That is probably a bit
difficult to grasp. Don't worry about it too much now, as
you become proficient as a Pascal programmer, you will very
clearly see how that is used.
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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
NOW LET'S LOOK AT A FUNCTION
Now to keep a promise, lets examine FUNCTION to see what
a function is and how to use it. In this very simple
program, we have a function that simply multiplies the sum
of two variables by 4 and returns the result. The major
difference between a function and a procedure is that the
function returns a single value and is called from within a
mathematical expression, a WRITELN command, or anywhere that
it is valid to put any variable, since it is really a
variable itself. Observing the Program Heading of the
function reveals the two input variables inside the
parenthesis pair being defined as INTEGER variables, and
following the parenthesis is a colon and another INTEGER.
The last INTEGER is used to define the type of the variable
being returned to the main program. Since any call to this
function is actually replaced by an integer upon completion
of the call, it can be used anywhere in a program where an
integer variable can be used.
NOW FOR THE MYSTERY OF RECURSION
One of the great mysteries of Pascal to many people, is
the recursion of procedure calls. Simply defined, recursion
is the ability of a procedure to call itself. Examine the
Pascal example file RECURSON for an example of recursion.
The main program is very simple, it sets the variable
"count" to the value 7 and calls the procedure
"print_and_decrement". The procedure prefers to refer to
the variable by the name "index" but that poses no problem.
The procedure writes a line to the video display with the
value of "index" written within the line, and decrements the
variable.
The IF statement introduces the interesting part of this
program. If the variable is greater than zero, and it is
now 6, then the procedure "print_and_decrement" is called
once again. This might seem to create a problem except for
the fact that this is perfectly legal in Pascal. Upon
entering the procedure the second time, the value of "index"
is printed as 6, and it is once again decremented. Since it
is now 5, the same procedure will be called again, and it
will continue until the value of "index" is reduced to zero
when each procedure call will be completed one at a time and
control will return to the main program.
ABOUT RECURSIVE PROCEDURES
This is really a stupid way to implement this particular
program, but it is the simplest recursive program that can
be written and therefore the easiest to understand. You
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CHAPTER 5 - The Pascal procedures and functions
will have occasional use for recursive procedures, so don't
be afraid to try them. Remember that the recursive
procedure must have some variable converging to something,
or you will have an infinite loop.
THE FORWARD REFERENCE
Occasionally you will have a need to refer to a
procedure before you can define it. In that case you will
need a FORWARD reference. The program FORWARD has an
example of a forward reference in it. In this program, each
one of the procedures calls the other, a form of recursion.
This program, like the last, is a very stupid way to count
from 7 to 0, but it is the simplest program possible with
the forward reference.
The first procedure, "write_a_line", has its header
defined in exactly the same manner as any other procedure
but instead of the normal procedure body, only the reserved
word FORWARD is given. This tells the compiler that the
procedure will be defined later. The next procedure is
defined as usual, then the body of "write_a_line" is given
with only the reserved word PROCEDURE and the procedure
name. The variable reference has been defined earlier. In
this way, each of the procedure names are defined before
they are called.
It would be possible, by using the FORWARD reference in
great numbers, to move the main program ahead of all
procedure definitions and have the program structured like
some other languages. This style of programming would be
perfectly legal as far as the compiler is concerned, but the
resulting program would be very nonstandard and confusing.
You would do well to stick with conventional Pascal
formatting techniques and use the FORWARD reference
sparingly.
PROGRAMMING EXERCISES
1. Write a program to write your name, address, and phone
number with each WRITELN in a different procedure.
2. Add a statement to the procedure in RECURSON to display
the value of "index" after the call to itself so you can
see the value increasing as the recurring calls are
returned to the next higher level.
3. Rewrite TEMPCONV putting the centigrade to fahrenheit
formulas in a function call.
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