Function input vs argument

Hi,

Sometimes it happens that I want to define a function f(x,y) that have two arguments (x ,y in this case ) to use it further in gradient computation or some similar application that requires a clear explicit definition of the function arguments (independent variables). However, this function f may also need some other inputs that are not arguments, they are needed just to complete some calculations inside the function f. My question is: how to pass these inputs without affecting the function call? I used to do it in a naïve inefficient way by simply make the other inputs global, so I can use them from inside, but I know that this is not the best thing to do.

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I would suggest that you (1) write the function to take all of the arguments it actually needs and then (2) use closures to fix some subset of those arguments when you need to do something like compute a gradient.

For example:

julia> function f(x, y, z)
         z * (x + y)
       end
f (generic function with 2 methods)

julia> g = (x, y) -> f(x, y, 2)
#7 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> g(1, 2)
6

Here f takes three arguments, all the data it requires to perform its operations. But given some fixed z (2 in this case), we can create a new anonymous function of just x and y that calls f as needed.

In this way, all of the function arguments are clearly indicated and efficiently passed into f, but we can still use g as the two-argument function you’re looking for.

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