Functional Programming - Pure Function

A function is considered as Pure Function if it fulfils the following two conditions −

• It always returns the same result for the given inputs and its results purely depends upon the inputs passed.

• It has no side effects means it is not modifying any state of the caller entity.

Example - Usage of Pure Function

FunctionTester.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class FunctionTester {    
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      int result = sum(2,3);
      System.out.println(result);
  
      result = sum(2,3);
      System.out.println(result);
   }
   static int sum(int a, int b){
      return a + b;
   }
}

Output

Run the FunctionTester and verify the output.

5
5

Here sum() is a pure function as it always return 5 when passed 2 and 3 as parameters at different times and has no side effects.

Example - Usage of Impure Function

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class FunctionTester {
   private static double valueUsed = 0.0; 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      double result = randomSum(2.0,3.0);
      System.out.println(result);
      result = randomSum(2.0,3.0);
      System.out.println(result);
   }
   
   static double randomSum(double a, double b){
      valueUsed = Math.random();       
      return valueUsed + a + b;
   }
}

Output

Run the FunctionTester and verify the output.

5.919716721877799
5.4830887819586795

Here randomSum() is an impure function as it return different results when passed 2 and 3 as parameters at different times and modifies state of instance variable as well.