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Writing A Function: Why Functions Are Better Than Scripts

Functions are better than scripts for calculating the area of a triangle because functions allow passing of parameters during runtime, making them repeatable. The document shows a function called trianglearea() that takes in base and height as parameters and returns the area. When called with different parameters like trianglearea(1,5) and trianglearea(2,5), it correctly returns different areas. In contrast, a script hardcodes the base and height values, making it not repeatable without manually changing the values. Functions provide consistent output for any set of input parameters passed during runtime.

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Pratiksh Patel
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13 views

Writing A Function: Why Functions Are Better Than Scripts

Functions are better than scripts for calculating the area of a triangle because functions allow passing of parameters during runtime, making them repeatable. The document shows a function called trianglearea() that takes in base and height as parameters and returns the area. When called with different parameters like trianglearea(1,5) and trianglearea(2,5), it correctly returns different areas. In contrast, a script hardcodes the base and height values, making it not repeatable without manually changing the values. Functions provide consistent output for any set of input parameters passed during runtime.

Uploaded by

Pratiksh Patel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Why Functions are better than scripts

Writing a function
function showarea = trianglearea(base,height)
to calculate the area of a triangle

Commented [PP1]: function showarea =


showarea = 0.5*(base.*height); trianglearea(base,height)
end Here the keyword is function, showarea is the output
variable and base and height are the input variables
Calling the function from the command line and the formula showarea= 0.5*(base.*height) is the
Showarea1 = trianglearea(1,5) #function callin which we pass user input during runtime transfer function which transforms the input into an
output which gets returned as part of the function called
Showarea1 = trianglearea that calculates the area of the triangle
2.5000
Showarea2 = trianglearea(2,5) #function callin which we pass user input during runtime
Showarea2 =
5.0000

OR

Writing a script
base = 1; # hardcoded user input prior to runtime
(m file) called trianglearea.m

height = 5; # hardcoded user input prior to runtime


a = 0.5*(base.*height)

Calling the script from the command window


triangle area #script call in the command line
a =
2.5000

Note: functions are more powerful that scripts because in the script we hardcode variables prior to runtime so
there is no repeatability in reusing the program over and over again. We can see that in the code above that
during runtime we were able to pass (1,5) and (2,5) so we reused the function 2x and that is why functions are
more repeatable because they allow us to pass parameters (base, height) during runtime and give a consistent
output whereas the output for the script is prone to human error as the output of 2.500 depends on the
hardcoded variable values base =1 & height =5 so its not repeatable because in order to get 5.000 we have to
manually change the hardcoded variable values from base =1 and height =5 to base = 2 and height = 5 which is
tedious. For functions it was a simple as writing Showarea2 = trianglearea(2,5) to accurately get
the output for another set of input parameters that were different from (1,5)

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