Functions in Clojure can behave differently depending on the number of
arguments they receive (their "arity"). A function can be written:

    (defn foo [x]
      (str "foo" x))

But you can also write:

    (defn foo
      ([] "empty foo")
      ([x] (str "foo" x))

This will do different things depending on the number of arguments:

    (foo)
    => "empty foo"
    (foo "bar")
    => "foobar"

- James

On 4 September 2016 at 21:54, Charlie <j831...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm going through the Do Things: A Clojure Crash Course, and the following
> example (in REPL) is presented:
>
> (defn recursive-printer
>   ([]
>      (recursive-printer 0))
>   ([iteration]
>      (println iteration)
>      (if (> iteration 3)
>        (println "Goodbye!")
>        (recursive-printer (inc iteration)))))(recursive-printer); => 
> Iteration 0; => Iteration 1; => Iteration 2; => Iteration 3; => Iteration 4; 
> => Goodbye!
>
>
> This works as expected, but I don't understand the syntax of the function
> definition. Specifically: (defn recursive-printer ([] (recursive-printer
> 0)). Isn't the parameter list supposed to be a vector [] not ([]...)? Also,
> I don't see how [iteration] is resolved on the next line.
>
> Thanx for any help!
>
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