I'm taking 'A Tour of GO' tutorial about Golang and this code:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"math"
)
func pow(x, n, lim float64) float64 {
if v := math.Pow(x, n); v < lim {
return v
} else {
fmt.Printf("%g >= %g
", v, lim)
}
// can't use v here, though
return lim
}
func main() {
fmt.Println(
pow(3, 2, 10),
pow(3, 3, 20),
)
}
would print "27 >= 20 9 20".
I'm rather confused why it's not "9 27 >= 20 20"
Shouldn't the first call to pow(3,2,10) return 9, print it, then call pow(3,3,20) and print the rest?
This is actually somewhat subtle and had me confused for a second. The "secret" is that a function must evaluate all its arguments before it's called. So it calls the function twice to get 9 and 20, but one of those evaluations happens to call Println.
It's fairly straightforward why the language evaluates its arguments before calling a function (that sort of partial application is tricky when side effects are involved, and is mostly reserved for functional languages), but hiding functions with side effects such as printing inside a function evaluation should probably be discouraged just for the purposes of clarity.
The code is perhaps more straightforwardly:
func main() {
arg1,arg2 := pow(3,2,10),pow(3,3,20)
fmt.Println(arg1, arg2)
}
fmt.Println()
needs all its parameters before it gets invoked.
So, you have 9, but while you're getting the other value (20) the console prints something else.
Is just like this:
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println(9, f())
}
func f() int {
fmt.Println("This gets printed before")
return 20
}
Output:
This gets printed before
9 20