Arguments to C Functions
You often need to pass a function some information before executing it. For example, in Listing 2.1 in Hour 2, a character string, "Howdy, neighbor! This is my first C program.\n", is passed to the printf() function, and then printf() prints the string on the screen.
Pieces of information passed to functions are known as arguments. The argument of a function is placed between the parentheses that immediately follow the function name.
The number of arguments to a function is determined by the task of the function. If a function needs more than one argument, arguments passed to the function must be separated by commas; these arguments are considered an argument list.
If no information needs to be passed to a function, you just leave the argument field between the parentheses blank. For instance, the main() function in Listing 2.1 of Hour 2 has no argument, so the field between the parentheses following the function name is empty.
The Beginning and End of a Function
As you may have already figured out, braces are used to mark the beginning and end of a function. The opening brace ({) signifies the start of a function body, while the closing brace (}) marks the end of the function body.
As mentioned earlier, the braces are also used to mark the beginning and end of a statement block. You can think of it as a natural extension to use braces with functions because a function body can contain several statements.
