Routines

A routine is a named, reusable block of code, invoked with call.

routine hello

println 'Hello from a routine!'

endroutine

call hello

Rules

• Every routine must be closed with endroutine.
• Routines cannot be nested. Defining a routine inside another routine is a compile error.
• Routines take no parameters and return no value. There’s no argument list on routine or call — communication in and out of a routine happens entirely through variables, which are global and shared across the whole program.
• A routine can be called from anywhere in the file, including before its routine ... endroutine block appears — routine calls are resolved after the full file is compiled.

Pattern: routines as functions over shared state

Because routines have no parameters, the idiomatic way to use them is to read and write well-known variable names, treating those variables as the routine’s implicit “arguments” and “return value”. The Temperature Converter example demonstrates this:

temp = 0
result = 0

routine c2f
result = temp * 9 / 5 + 32
endroutine

routine f2c
result = temp - 32
result = result * 5 / 9
endroutine

routine show
print 'Result: '
println result
endroutine

inputInt &temp
call c2f
call show

c2f and f2c both read temp and write result; show reads result back out. It’s a manual convention, not something the language enforces — nothing stops a routine from touching a variable it “shouldn’t”, so keep routines small and their variable contracts obvious.