Are User Defined Functions supported in UniData

Question

Currently investigating migrating from mvBase to Unidata and would like to know if User Defined Functions are supported as I cannot see this in the documentation I have downloaded?

e.g I have DATABASIC program with something like

A = @FUNCTION_NAME(VAR1)

Answer 1

Yes, Unidata supports user defined functions.

To create a function in Unidata, use a line like this on line 1 of the code file:

FUNCTION MY.FUNCTION.NAME( ARG1, ARG2 )

Inside the function, use the RETURN statement to return a result:

RETURN ARG1 + ARG2

To call it, you have to indicate that you're going to use it with the DEFFUN statement in the program that will use the function:

DEFFUN MY.FUNCTION.NAME( ARG1, ARG2 )

I usually put my DEFFUN statements near the top of the program, right after any $INCLUDEs. (The parameter names don't have to match between the FUNCTION and DEFFUN lines, but I don't know of any reason to purposefully make them different.)

After that setup, you can call the function by using its name in an expression:

TOTAL = MY.FUNCTION.NAME( 10, 15 )

After that statement, TOTAL will have a value of 25.

I've never seen a function called with the @FUNCTION_NAME syntax in Unidata.