Scala for Backend Engineering & Functional Programming · Lesson

Functions as First-Class Values

Learn to define and pass functions as arguments, return them from other functions, and store them in variables.

Welcome to Functional Programming Core! In Scala, functions are not just commands; they're first-class values.

This means you can treat functions just like any other data type, such as numbers or strings. This is a core concept in functional programming!

Assigning Functions to Variables

Just like you can assign a number to a val, you can assign a function to one. Here, greet becomes a variable holding our function.

Try running this simple example:

object Main {
  def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
    val greet = (name: String) => s"Hello, $name!"
    println(greet("Alice"))
  }
}