Maksim IvanovProgramming tutorials

Pure Functions And Side Effects

March 10, 2019

In computer programming pure function is a function that satisfies two conditions:

  • It is deterministic, which means that for any given input it will always return same output.
  • It has no side effects. Which means it doesn’t change outside world. Doesn’t perform input/output operation or change global variables.

The most simple example of pure function is an identity function:

const identity = (x) => x;

For any given x it will return its value, so it is determenistic.

It also has to side-effects as it doesn’t interact with global environment.

More practical example of pure function could be sum that will return sum of its arguments:

const sum = (x, y) => x + y;

This function is pure as well. For any given x and y it will always return same result.

Contrary to that Math.random() is an example of nondeterministic function.

Every time you call it - you can get different result.

Math.random();  // 0.30498094536268224
Math.random();  // 0.30387681124534656
Math.random();  // 0.03712550164644983

Any function that will use result of Math.random() execution inside of it will also become nondeterministic and impure.

Another example of an impure function is function with side effects.

let x = 0;

const increment = () => {
  x = x + 1;
  return x;

increment() // 1
increment() // 2
increment() // 3
increment() // 4

Here function increment is impure because it alters the global variable x.

Every time you will call it you will get different result.

Benefits Of Pure Functions

Pure functions have a bunch of benefits over impure ones.

First of all pure functions are easier to read. Pure functions tend to be small and do one thing.

Pure functions are easier to test. Since there are no side effects and the output depends only on the input, your test cases are straightforward.

Pure functions are very composable. In functional programming it is very common to compose small pure functions into more complex ones.

const mult = (a, b) => a * b;
add(2, mult(3, 5))
// 17

Here we passed the result of mult as a second argument of our add function.

Pure functions are memoizable. That means that you can save result of your function execution to use it later.

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