Nested function call

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

A convention used in many programming languages (python, javascript, C, liquidsoap)

When you see:

foo(bar(baz()))

In fact what happens is:

  • baz() gets called, and it's output * is used as input to:
  • bar( * ) which gets call, and it's output ** sent as input to:
  • foo ( ** )

Using temporary variables, the chain of events could also be written:

x = baz()
y = bar(x)
z = foo(y)

Note that although written differently (in a more linear fashion), the resulting program does exactly the same thing. Since it's more compact, and doesn't introduce temporary variables, programmers tend to write:

result = foo(bar(baz()))