Side effect--what's this?

Question

Could someone tell me the meaning of \"side effect\" in the following line?

If you\'re calling an EL function that doesn\'t return anything, then you\

Answer 1

When you use a medicine, it's side effects are those that are generally unwanted bad effects. The main purpose to use it is to get it's "demanded" effect. Here, when we look at the angle of functions, generally when you call them you get a calculated value and use. There are other functions that they also change some values while calculating the "demanded" value so here the "changing some values" is a side effect. In the description of your sentence, if a function does not return anything, it is only used for its side effects so here, the side effects are "changing some values".