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Learning Elixir

You're reading from   Learning Elixir Unveil many hidden gems of programming functionally by taking the foundational steps with Elixir

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2016
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785881749
Length 286 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Kenneth Ballou Kenneth Ballou
Author Profile Icon Kenneth Ballou
Kenneth Ballou
Kenny Ballou Kenny Ballou
Author Profile Icon Kenny Ballou
Kenny Ballou
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Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally FREE CHAPTER 2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming 3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks 4. Collections and Stream Processing 5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch 6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency 7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework 8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node 9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less Index

Named functions


Named functions, unlike anonymous functions, require a module for definition. That is, to define a named function we must define the function inside a module.

Here, we combine what we learned about modules and anonymous functions a bit, and we define our square function again, though, this time, we define it inside a module named MyMath. Go ahead and create a file called mymath.exs and put the following code into it:

defmodule MyMath do

  def square(x) do
    x * x
  end

end

Here, we are simply defining a function, square, which takes a single element, and returns the result of x * x. This really looks not much different from our previous versions except for being defined inside a module.

How do we run this module and see whether it works? Well, you might have tried $ elixir mymath.exs but that probably didn't do anything interesting...

The answer lies in importing the module in an interactive session. First, make sure your working directory is the same as the directory you...

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