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In computer programming, a function (also procedure, method, subroutine, routine, or subprogram) is a callable unit [1] of software logic that has a well-defined interface and behavior and can be invoked multiple times.
It is usual to associate a single process with a main program, and child processes with any spin-off, parallel processes, which behave like asynchronous subroutines. A process is said to own resources, of which an image of its program (in memory) is one such resource.
A computer program or subroutine is called reentrant if multiple invocations can safely run concurrently on multiple processors, or if on a single-processor system its execution can be interrupted and a new execution of it can be safely started (it can be "re-entered").
In computer programming, a nested function (or nested procedure or subroutine) is a named function that is defined within another, enclosing, block and is lexically scoped within the enclosing block – meaning it is only callable by name within the body of the enclosing block and can use identifiers declared in outer blocks, including outer ...
This means that a program consisting of many function calls may have considerable amounts of repeated code as well. To address this, threaded code systems used pseudo-code to represent function calls in a single operator. At run time, a tiny "interpreter" would scan over the top-level code, extract the subroutine's address in memory, and call it.
Today, subroutines are more often used to help make a program more structured, e.g., by isolating some algorithm or hiding some data access method. If many programmers are working on one program, subroutines are one kind of modularity that can help divide the work.
A computer program is a sequence or set [a] of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. It is one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. [1] A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code.
In computer programming, a return statement causes execution to leave the current subroutine and resume at the point in the code immediately after the instruction which called the subroutine, known as its return address. The return address is saved by the calling routine, today usually on the process's call stack or in a register.