Side-effect (computer science)

In computer science, a function or expression is said to have a side effect if it modifies some state outside its scope or has an observable interaction with its calling functions or the outside world. (Except, by convention, returning a value: returning a value has an effect on the calling function, but this is usually not considered as a side effect.). For example, a particular function might modify a global variable or static variable, modify one of its arguments, raise an exception, write data to a display or file, read data, or call other side-effecting functions. In the presence of side effects, a program's behaviour may depend on history; that is, the order of evaluation matters. Understanding and debugging a function with side effects requires knowledge about the context and its possible histories.

Side effects are the most common way that a program interacts with the outside world (people, filesystems, other computers on networks). But the degree to which side effects are used depends on the programming paradigm. Imperative programming is known for its frequent utilization of side effects.

In functional programming, side effects are rarely used. The lack of side effects makes it easier to do formal verifications of a program. Functional languages such as Standard ML, Scheme and Scala do not restrict side effects, but it is customary for programmers to avoid them. The functional language Haskell expresses side effects such as I/O and other stateful computations using monadic actions.

Assembly language programmers must be aware of hidden side effects — instructions that modify parts of the processor state which are not mentioned in the instruction's mnemonic. A classic example of a hidden side effect is an arithmetic instruction that implicitly modifies condition codes (a hidden side effect) while it explicitly modifies a register (the overt effect). One potential drawback of an instruction set with hidden side effects is that, if many instructions have side effects on a single piece of state, like condition codes, then the logic required to update that state sequentially may become a performance bottleneck. The problem is particularly acute on some processors designed with pipelining (since 1990) or with out-of-order execution. Such a processor may require additional control circuitry to detect hidden side effects and stall the pipeline if the next instruction depends on the results of those effects.

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