Pure functions

The most common definition of a pure function is a function that does not have side effects. This is to say that the returned value of a pure function is not affected, influenced, or changed by anything other than its input parameters. Provided the same input, the pure function always generates the same output. An example is as follows:

const sum = (a, b) => a + b;

This is an example of a pure function. Assuming that you call the function sum(6,9), the result is always 15, irrespective of the number of times that you run the function. You can be confident, if you are calling a pure function with the same input, that you are always going to get the same output, which means that the output is predictable. An example of an impure function is the following square function. In addition to returning the square of the number, the function might be updating the number in a database:

function square(number) {
 updateNumberInDB(number);
 return number * number;
}